

| LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

[ §§ap.Z i.aopgrisfctfo, .... .. 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 





3Sp Eeto* a* |3. fleai)Ofcj>. 



REMINISCENCES OF EUROPEAN TRA- 
VEL. i6mo, $1.50. 

HARVARD REMINISCENCES. i2mo, gilt 
top, $1.25. 

HARVARD GRADUATES WHOM I HAVE 
KNOWN, iamo, gilt top, $1.25. 

KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. i 2 mo, gilt 
top, $1.50. 

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York. 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS 



/ 

ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY, D. D,, LL. D. 

PREACHER TO HARVARD UNIVERSITY, AND PLUMMER PROFESSOR OF 
CHRISTIAN MORALS, EMERITUS 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1891 



^ 6 



A 6 . 



Copyright, 1891, 
By ANDREW PRESTON PEABODY. 

All rights reserved. 



The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., V. S. A. 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 



PREFACE. 



The sermons in this volume were, all of them, 
preached at King's Chapel, and most of them writ- 
ten for that use, — the greater part of them dur- 
ing the illness and since the death of my very dear 
friend, Rev. Henry W. Foote, under whose pastor- 
ate I deemed it my privilege to place myself after 
I resigned my office as Preacher to the University. 
The last three sermons were printed at the request 
of the Wardens and Vestry, and are now reprinted. 

There are in Christian theology certain funda- 
mental truths and in ethics certain eternal princi- 
ples and laws, which should underlie all preaching, 
and must therefore often reappear from beneath a 
wide diversity of subject and of form. Repetition 
of this type I should be sorry to have shunned. 

These sermons were written with no purpose of 
publication. They were adapted, to the best of 
my ability, to time, place, and occasion. If they 
are of any worth, they are on this account of none 
the less worth ; for long experience has taught me 



IV 



PREFACE. 



that there are no spiritual idiosyncrasies, and that 
it is such views of truth and duty as seem to be of 
limited and special application that meet the needs 
of the largest number and diversity of minds and 
hearts. 



CONTENTS, 

SERMON PAGE 

I. Preaching . . . . . . . .1 

II. Causation, Human and Divine ... 14 

III. "Therefore," or the Working Forces of 

Christianity 26 

IV. The Present Aspect of Christianity . . 43 
V. Immortality 58 

VI. A Good Name . . . . . . . 70 

VII. Word and Thought 83 

VIII. The Law of God 95 

IX. Christ and the Poor .106 

X. Church-Building 118 

XI. God in Christ 129 

XII. Nehemiah 143 

XIII. Castle-Building . . . . . . .154 

XIV. Three Parables . . . . . .167 

XV. Beauty . .179 

XVI. The Sons of God 188 

XVII. The Hidden Man of the Heart . . . 203 

XVIII. Heaven Open 217 

XIX. Autumn 230 

XX. The Arithmetical Law of Combination . 240 

XXI. Christianity as old as the Creation . . 252 



vi CONTENTS. 

XXII. Stumbling Stones 263 

XXIII. The Feeble Members Necessary . . . 275 

XXIV. True Wealth 286 

XXV. Our Ignorance of the Future . . . 295 

XXVI. The Power op the Resurrection . . 305 

XXVII. Voices of the Dead 317 

XXVIII. Henry Wilder Foote 331 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



SEEMON L 

PKEACHING. 
" The foolishness of preaching'." — 1 Cor. i. 21. 

Paul meant and felt what he wrote. He knew, 
no man better, what human wisdom was, outside 
of the gospel. At Tarsus, where he was brought 
up, there was a celebrated school of philosophy, 
and in his Epistles there are tokens unmistakable, 
though few, of his knowledge of Greek poetry, 
philosophy, and dialectics. He was also a pupil of 
the Rabbi Gamaliel, whose maxims and apologues 
shine like gems among pebbles in the dreary pages 
of the Talmud. Yet this wisdom had been of the 
feeblest influence and the scantiest service. In the 
Gentile world the disciples of the several schools of 
philosophy were skillful phrase-mongers, but had 
not learned of their respective masters the virtues 
which adorned their lives and made their memories 
fragrant, while licentiousness and profligacy, un- 
veiled and unbridled, were eating out the vitals of 



2 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



civilization throughout the whole Roman empire. 
Then as for the Jews, they had given themselves 
up to heartless ritualism and pietistic immorality, 
insomuch that the very foremost among their 
doctors of the law recommended a fictitious con- 
secration of one's property as a device for evading 
the support of his aged parents. I will not say 
that they were going from bad to worse ; for I can 
imagine nothing worse than this. 

While the wisdom of this world was thus coming 
to nought, here were those poor fishermen and 
peasants, whose Galilean accent could provoke the 
ridicule of a maid-servant at Jerusalem, and whose 
Greek, when they came to speak and write it, 
bristled all over with strange Hebrew idioms, 
making their thousands of converts, and that, not 
to a mere form of words, but to a renovated and 
hallowed life, apart from and above the surround- 
ing world, in the felt presence and power of 
Almighty God. Paul marvels at himself, too. 
He had indeed no equal on the earth ; but he did 
not know it. In the very letter from which I take 
my text are that portrait of charity, or love, and 
that chapter on the resurrection, which transcend, 
the former in beauty, the latter in grandeur, all 
literature outside of the Bible. Yet it is only 
unconscious, self-forgetting genius that can write 
thus. It was because he felt himself the least of 



PREACHING. 



8 



the apostles, and not worthy to be called an apostle, 
that he could thus spontaneously surpass the most 
consummate grace and the loftiest flight of am- 
bitious rhetoric. He therefore undervalued his 
own work, as in profound lowliness of spirit he 
wrote, " Not I, but the grace of God which was with 
me." 

Now what was this foolishness of preaching, this 
preaching which Paul so characterized, as compared 
with the profoundness of the Greek philosophy and 
the keen subtilty of the Hebrew sages? It was 
the simple story of a lowly life and an ignominious 
death, about which, indeed, clustered traditions of 
certain marvelous phenomena beyond the ordinary 
range of human experience, — traditions true, I 
have no doubt, yet which, even in that credulous 
age, men were very slow to believe concerning one 
who had died the death of a felon slave, and which 
could have been made credible then, as they can be 
now, only by unmistakable tokens of a divineness 
in the sufferer such as has been seen in no son of 
man beside. That such a story, of one so despised 
and rejected of men, told too by men who for the 
mere telling of it had become, in his own words, 
" as the filth of the world and the off scouring of 
all things," should have wrought on the souls of 
multitudes with transforming efficacy seemed to 
Paul, though fact, stranger than fiction ; and in his 



4 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



modesty and self-distrust, placing himself on the 
same footing with the other apostles, he accounts 
his and their preaching as foolish and weak by any 
human standard, though he is compelled to own 
that " the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and 
the weakness of God stronger than men." 

Undoubtedly, there has been, and there still is, 
preaching that is really foolish, a great deal more 
which, though not unwise, is feeble ; and I pity the 
man, however able he may seem or be, who can 
treat of themes worthy of an angel's tongue, and 
not feel, as Paul did, humbled in view of the grand- 
eur of his work. Yet still, as in the primitive time, 
while the gospel of Christ is the prime moving 
power in the spiritual world, preaching is its prime 
conductor to the human soul, and mankind can as 
little dispense with it now as when the gospel was 
Heaven's fresh gift. 

As, after our summer vacation, we recommence 
our public worship here, it may not be unfitting for 
us so to consider together the worth of preaching 
in itself that, irrespectively of all personal prefer- 
ences, we may give it our loyal attendance and our 
hearty support. 

Let me ask you at the outset : Did it ever occur 
to you what strong testimony is borne to the Divine 
element in the Bible by preaching of all sorts taken 
in the aggregate? Preaching from specific texts 



PEE ACHING. 



5 



of Holy Writ was a Jewish custom, of which we 
have one instance in our Saviour's own minis- 
try, and it has always been usual in the Christian 
Church, first from the Old Testament, and for many 
centuries from both the Old and the New. Now 
is there any other book that could have stood such 
use, — that could have furnished texts for so much 
foolish, dull, stupid, untimely, wearisome preaching, 
and not have been degraded, vulgarized, brought 
into utter disrepute ? I have no hard - and - fast 
theory of inspiration. Indeed, it is simply absurd 
to place in the same category psalm and proverb, 
history and prophecy, tradition and parable. The 
Bible is a miscellany from divers and unlike times 
and authors, and you can no more make an au- 
thentic statement of the common characteristics 
of its contents, than you can of the common char- 
acteristics of Paradise Lost, Bacon's Essays, and 
Wordsworth's Excursion. But, if I may use a 
figure which recent events have made more familiar 
to us than we would gladly have it, a stupendous 
tidal wave from the Spirit of God swept over the 
Hebrew mind through successive ages of patriarch, 
sage, and seer, culminating in him who spake as 
never man spake beside, and the Bible bears the 
record of high water-mark all along those centuries. 
Therefore is it that nothing can make the Bible 
seem less than its name, — the Book beyond and 



6 



KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS. 



above all others; while in its turn the Bible ele- 
vates and hallows what else were mean, paltry, 
trivial. 

Then, too, these texts are often in themselves 
the best possible preaching, and in the hearing 
and the memory have and retain the most intense 
emphasis. The text often puts the sermon to 
shame, and humbles the preacher, who feels in 
attempting to reach it as the Persian archers must 
have felt when they aimed at the sun; but like 
them he attains the higher mark because he aims 
at what he cannot reach. Simply because these 
sacred books were written under so strong a spirit- 
ual impulse, they abound in single sentences and 
phrases fraught with vast and deep significance, 
which take a clinching grasp on the conscience and 
the emotional nature ; and while for the few who 
would read continuously and thoughtfully it may 
be a disadvantage to have the Bible so broken up 
into aphoristic sayings, to the large majority it is 
of unspeakable gain as to impression and influence. 
A text often strikes deep, and leaves a lifelong 
mark. Not only are our Saviour's own teachings 
full of these utterances complete in themselves, — 
Paul also has many such texts ; they abound in 
the Psalms and in some of the Prophets ; and of 
the Proverbs, — the collective proverbial wisdom of 
ages, — while many are merely shrewd maxims of 



PBEACHIXG. 



worldly wisdom, quite a large proportion of them 
are inestimably precious as warnings and counsels 
appertaining to the moral character and the inward 
life. Every one whose mind has been directed to 
the subject, especially every preacher, has known 
instances in which a single text has been spiritually 
the making of a man, and many more instances in 
which important, critical emergencies of temptation, 
trial, or duty have had their complexion and issue 
thus determined. 

Onlv a few davs ago, I met with a striking in- 
stance of this in the Life of Bishop Selwyn, of New 
Zealand. The English have obtained the greater 
part of Xew Zealand in ways which only a con- 
science of the peculiarly English type can justify, 
in a series of petty wars in which the natives have 
fought for their homes, and manifestly with right 
on their side. In one of these wars, an English 
officer, fatally wounded, fell into the hands of the 
enemy, and was cared for through the night with 
the utmost tenderness by a Maori youth, a Chris- 
tian convert, who was one of the native soldiers. 
This youth, finding that the officer was suffering 
from burning thirst, and knowing that the onlv ac- 
cessible spring was within the English lines, risked 
his life to obtain water for the sufferer. The next 
day he was slain in a second conflict, and in his 
pocket was found, written in the Maori tongue, 



s 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



the text, " If thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he 
thirst, give him drink." Who can doubt that this 
simple text had brought that poor boy into the 
closest spiritual kinship with him who on the cross 
prayed for his murderers ? 

As regards the preaching, however far below an 
ideal standard it may be, if sincere, earnest, and on 
a level, as it must generally be, with the receptivity 
of the hearers, it can hardly ever be wholly in vain. 
If what is said merely sinks into the memory, it 
must be borne in mind that memory is more a seed- 
plot than a grave, — that what seems buried there 
beyond hope of resurrection may, under the suns 
or showers of some later day, spring up and bear 
fruit. Nor is there ever reason to despair of a 
more speedy harvest. The preacher's work is well 
typified in the parable of the sower. Much of the 
seed may fall on stony ground or on the hard-trod- 
den wayside ; yet it can scarcely be that some of it 
will not alight on soil that is all ready for it. And 
where the soil takes it in, it has a wonderful ger- 
minating power. It may be the least of all seeds, 
some suggestion of a fragmentary truth, or of a 
neglected duty that seems of very slight concern. 
But what may spring from it, or how wide or high 
may be its growth, God only knows. There are 
unnumbered ways in which the life of God may 
plant itself in the soul. There is not a single ethi- 



PREACHING. 



9 



cal or spiritual truth, however secondary or small a 
space it may hold in a summary of belief or duty, 
that may not become a saving truth. The infini- 
tesimal grain, sowed in faith and love, and received 
into a waiting soul, may shoot up into an overshad- 
owing tree, and not only so, but, as with the banyan 
tree, branches from it will fall to the ground and 
take root, so that a whole forest, or rather a richly 
fruitful garden of the Lord, may grow from a sin- 
gle tiny seed. Now there may be on every occa- 
sion in which there is faithful preaching some in- 
dividual hearer for whom the right moment has 
come, — a moment that shall be an epoch in his 
spiritual life worthy of his eternal gratitude. 

But while what I say has a plausible sound, there 
are probably some here who would rejoin, " I go to 
church from Sunday to Sunday, and yet hardly 
ever hear anything new, and what little is new is 
either rhetoric no better than I might read or hear 
elsewhere, or else the discussion of dogmas, which 
at best are of minor importance, and certainly are 
of no practical use or moral value." I would ask 
in reply, Why should not religion have the aid of 
rhetoric ? especially when sacred rhetoric has held 
in all times a foremost place in literature as re- 
gards both majesty and beauty. Then as to dis- 
cussion, there is of necessity a philosophy of re- 
ligion, no less than of physics and of morals, and 



10 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

though you may live decently and virtuously with- 
out understanding either of the three, if either of 
them is worthy of your interest, certainly that which 
appertains to God and to your own immortal nature 
is not the least so. But with the preacher worthy 
of his office, rhetoric and philosophy are the means, 
not the end. His endeavor is to impress upon 
his hearers some one of the few fundamental truths 
of the spiritual universe, — truths which could be 
stated in a single brief sentence, which a child of 
five or six years could understand, yet which in 
their magnitude comprehend all space and time and 
being. These are truths which you do not doubt, 
but which you ignore simply because they seem so 
obvious ; and the preacher's hope always is that he 
may present some one of these old, trite, word-worn 
truths in a form in which it may not glance from 
your mind, but may strike in and strike deep. I 
should not want to go outside of the (so-called) 
Apostles' Creed, as it stands over the altar before 
you. There are several of those articles, which 
most or all of you believe, any one of which, could 
you be made to feel as well as to believe it, would 
create for you the very highest type of character in 
heart, soul, and life, — would fit you for all that 
lies before you equally in this world and in the 
world to come. If I could only send one of you 
home to-day with a true heart-faith in the first of 



PREACHING. 



11 



those articles, " I believe in God the Father Al- 
mighty, Maker of heaven and earth," I should have 
done for you an eternal life-work. Some of the 
greatest preachers, some who have filled this pulpit 
to the special edification of their hearers, have as 
preachers never done anything else than to put 
their whole might of mind and soul into what might 
seem the merest truisms. Dr. Walker, in the mem- 
ory of many of you a favorite preacher here, and 
certainly one of the greatest minds of his time, 
never undertook to prove anything that his hearers 
were supposed to doubt, but employed his unsur- 
passed power in making them feel what perhaps 
every one of them professed to believe. 

Now this preaching seems to me of unspeakable 
worth. We find fault with the world, with our 
world, with society as it is ; I cannot but think that 
it would be immeasurably worse without preaching. 
It is of immense importance that these old stories 
be told in new ways, these old truths repeated in 
new forms, what belongs to all time clothed in the 
raiment of our own time, from week to week and 
from year to year. Public worship alone will not 
meet all our need. There must be in worship a 
certain sameness, else it loses both in dignity and in 
comprehensiveness. There are very strong grounds 
for preferring for the public service a liturgy, if, 
as here, it can be varied or set aside on fit occa- 



12 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

sions ; for by this repetition from Sunday to Sun- 
day of the same holy words, the selfsame channels 
of devout thought may be worn deeper and deeper 
for an ever fuller flow. But because of this same- 
ness of worship, there is only the greater need of 
the fresh stimulus to thought and feeling which 
preaching ought to supply, so that if any of the 
really devout men and women are in any respect 
careless livers, they may be led to watch while they 
pray, and that those for whom the worship is a 
mere solemn form may be roused to a conscious- 
ness of its reality, and of their own close, inevita- 
ble, eternal relation to its objects. 

In my boyhood the old-fashioned ministers used 
to pray — I must have heard it scores of times — 
that their listeners might have a hearing ear and 
an understanding heart. A most fitting prayer. 
The hearing ear is more common now than then, 
not, I fear, because of greater willingness to hear, 
but of the less frequency with which overworked 
bodies obey the Sunday summons. Nor is the un- 
derstanding mind wanting. There is fully enough 
of criticism. But the understanding heart is what 
is needed above all else. The affections are cog- 
nitive powers no less than the intellect. The heart 
knows truth by its affinities, as the mind verifies it 
by reasoning. What we feel, we know by a con- 
sciousness more trustworthy than logic. Now 



PBEACHIXG, 



13 



what we most of all need in our worship is to feel 
when we enter the hallowed courts that we are 
really coming by prayer, hymn, and chant into 
closer communion than is our wont with the ever- 
present Infinite Love, that we are invoking nearer 
converse with that Infinite Love as incarnate for 
our salvation, that we are listening not to man's 
wisdom, but to the voice of God floating down 
these Christian ages, yet no less truly his than if 
it fell upon our ears from the parted heavens. 

If we come with hearts thus disposed to listen, 
and if the preacher be in earnest, I am sure that 
we shall find in the feeblest sermon the power of 
God, in the least wise sermon the wisdom of God, 
for our growth in grace and our training for heaven. 



SERMON II. 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 

"Every house is builded by some man ; but he that built all 
things is God. : ' — Heb. iii. 4. 

I doubt whether argument ever convinced a 
willing and sincere atheist of the being of God ; 
but we who believe in God, and should be wretched 
if we did not believe in him, may sometimes find it 
profitable to recognize the ways in which he reveals 
himself to us, not in the outward universe alone, 
but equally in the phenomena of our own conscious- 
ness. The physical science of our time is currently 
charged with antagonism to religious faith, but 
wrongly. Some scientists have indeed gone out of 
their way to give vent to skepticism or unbelief ; 
but when they have done so, they should, if honest, 
have spoken in their own names, not in that of 
science. Their proper work is to describe the 
house, not to tell who built it. If they give them- 
selves faithfully and conscientiously to their work, 
we, who cannot work with them, ought to be 
ready to accept their conclusions, however opposed 
they may be to our previous opinions. But when 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 15 

they say, as some of them say, " The house is so 
perfectly built, and is so thoroughly provided with 
the means of keeping itself in repair, that no archi- 
tect or carpenter can ever have had anything to 
do with it, — it must have built itself," — they are 
no longer on their own ground, but on ground on 
which unscientific common sense is fully competent 
to try the issue with them, and has an undoubted 
right to affix to such utterances the stamp of folly 
and absurdity. But entirely aside from scientific 
theories, there are routes by which the soul can 
hardly come to itself without at the same time 
coming to God. One of these routes is so obviously 
suggested by my text, that I cannot but think that 
the writer had it clearly in his own mind. He 
passes from man, the builder, the cause, to God, 
the builder, the cause ; and from what man, but 
from the self, — the only being so intimately known 
to any one of us as to be safely reasoned from ? 

Whence comes the idea of causation ? Not from 
the outward world, but from your and my own con- 
sciousness. Suppose yourself, my friend, with in- 
tellectual endowments equal, nay, superior to those 
of the greatest man that ever lived, with the power 
of observation, of retentive memory, of communica- 
tion with other men, and with ample knowledge of 
the past. You are acquainted with all the facts 
and laws of the outward universe up to and beyond 



16 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



the results of the latest scientific research, and with 
all that is taking place among men. But you are 
a mere observer and knower, not a doer. You have 
no active powers. You cannot even move a finger. 
There is not an object in the universe which you 
can change, modify, or influence. Nor have you any 
desire to act. You are content with this passive 
life, and cannot even imagine any other. You 
know not even what it is to will. Yet everything 
else is the same as it is now. There are precisely 
the same connections of objects and events in time 
and space. Before your eyes the magnet attracts 
the iron bar ; the lever raises the huge rock ; the 
falling river impels the floats of the wheel; the 
ball speeds from the cannon's mouth ; the grand pan- 
orama of nature has its coincidences and sequences ; 
you see the tides corresponding to the phases 
and terms of the moon ; you are warmed by the 
sun at noonday, and chilled by the blasts of winter. 
Now all this you might see for a lifetime, for an 
eternity ; yet the idea of a cause would never occur 
to you ; you would never say to yourself, " The 
moon makes the tide rise, — the sun pours out the 
genial rays that gladden me, — the river forces the 
water-wheel to revolve." You would know that 
certain phenomena always succeeded certain other 
phenomena ; but they would be to you like the fig- 
ures in a puppet show, which follow one another 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 17 



round in the same order without acting on one 
another. All that you would really see in nature or 
trace in history would be uniform antecedence and 
consequence, not causation. If you were the high- 
est intelligence in the universe, and yet destitute of 
force and of will-power, the conception of causation 
would be impossible for you ; for causation would 
never have entered into your own experience. 

But you yourself are a cause. Causation has 
been a part of your hourly experience from the 
very birth of your self-consciousness. You produce 
effects and witness them, and learn from them your 
own causative power. Moreover, of the objects 
under your immediate control, none change their 
place or form without your causative agency. They 
are inert unless you start them from their inertia 
by doing something to them or with them. 

Now go back one step farther. You are a cause. 
But what of you or in you exerts this causative 
power? Not your hands or your feet. Not the 
organs that belong to your material frame ; but 
your will, of which those organs are but the instru- 
ments, without which they would be as inert as the 
lifeless objects around you, and to which your 
hands or your feet are fully as subservient as are 
the inanimate instruments which you move with 
hand or foot. It is not your hand, but your will 
that lifts, displaces, readjusts, repairs, destroys, 



18 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

and when hand or foot will not of itself suffice for 
the behests of the will, that same will arms or 
reinforces hand or foot with tools, implements, 
material agencies, mechanical powers, that do its 
bidding. 

But this will of yours is immaterial, if anything 
is so. You know not where it dwells in you. No 
scalpel can lay it bare ; no microscope can discern 
it. It is in full strength when your body is weak; 
and is never more vigorous than it often is when 
the body is dying. 

Now throughout the entire range of your activ- 
ity this unseen, non-material will is the only ulti- 
mate cause of everything that you do, the cause of 
all the sub-causes which you put in motion. 

The case is the same with your fellow-men. 
Throughout the entire sphere of human activity 
this immaterial mind-power of the will has pro- 
duced all the changes that have taken place. It 
has developed human nature, has given birth to 
civilization, founded and overthrown empires, cre- 
ated history. 

I go beyond the human race, and find in the ani- 
mals with which I come into intimate relation the 
same will-power. Their intelligence is less than 
ours, but such as it is, it is the cause of their ac- 
tion. They move at haphazard no more than we. 
They have purposes, and carry them into execution. 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 19 



They plan, and put into motion the means for their 
plaus, not infrequently with a wise choice of instru- 
ments and a sagacity of foresight hardly less, nay, 
sometimes even more than human. 

Thus, with regard to a very large portion of the 
universe around you, and as to a great part of the 
objects and events within your near cognizance, 
mind-power, will-power, is the sole cause of motion, 
activity, creation, destruction, change. 

Beyond this range, however, there is perpetual 
motion, activity, creation, destruction, change. 
There is a vast system of harmonious action and 
inter-action, embracing the sun, planets, and far-off 
stars, the primeval forests where human foot has 
never trod, the ocean which man commands only 
by obeying it, the winds and storms which man 
propitiates only by yielding to their sway. Then, 
too, there are innumerable races of minute, many 
of them microscopic, beings that work with a pre- 
cision transcending human skill, build better than 
they can possibly know, construct honeycombs, 
coral reefs, layers of the earth-crust, which bear all 
the characteristics of plan and purpose, showing 
that their individual will-power is made subservient, 
often in accordance with mathematical laws that 
can be known only by superior intelligence, to ends 
of which it is impossible that they should be con- 
scious. In the larger races of animals, too, of 



20 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



whose action we see and know that the will-power 
is the immediate cause, there is maintained, from 
age to age, a proportion of numbers, a balance of 
power, a mutual serviceableness, which is beyond 
their individual wills, yet which, so far as we can 
see, preserves among them a maximum of sentient 
enjoyment with a minimum of privation and suffer- 
ing ; and this condition of things is, as is univer- 
sally admitted, an effect, and must therefore have 
a cause, that cause being constraining and inevita- 
ble law in the opinion even of those who own no 
lawgiver. 

Still farther, while man is consciously a cause in 
the entire sphere of his activity, there is in his col- 
lective experience the same phenomenon that we 
recognize in animal life. There are the filaments 
of a plan, of a system, running through all human 
history. Man's separate volitions are sporadic, in- 
dependent, mutually incongruous, yet they work to- 
gether in large and in the long run with benign 
purpose and happy issue. Unplanned good springs 
from evil that is planned. Aggregated selfishness 
works beneficently. There is from age to age de- 
velopment, progress, amelioration, beyond individ- 
ual purpose, yet through the causative agency of 
human wills which accomplish their immediate ends. 
There is, it is admitted on all hands, a higher, 
deeper cause in history than the individual wills 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 21 

that make it. If not God, there is law in history, 
and even the wrath of man praises law, if not God. 

There is, then, outside of the sphere of causation 
under the control of finite minds, and somehow, sub- 
tilely, but inevitably working within that sphere 
to systematize the aggregate results of voluntary 
causation, a causative power. What is that power ? 
Within our own sphere of action and of observa- 
tion we know no cause but mind, intelligent will. 
W r e have no experience, no conception of any other 
cause. Beyond that range there are effects in a 
multitudinous, unbroken series, and cause, or causes, 
there must needs be. Yet not causes ; for the uni- 
verse in all its parts, the heavens and the earth, or- 
ganisms animate and iu animate, man, so far as he 
is not self-governed, are not systems, but a system. 
Science at every stage of its development is more 
and more unifying. Its imponderable forces are 
no longer many, but one. Its last word, develop- 
ment, evolution, is but another name for unity. If 
from pristine, homogeneous star-mist has bloomed 
forth the infinite diversity of world, element, be- 
ing, then by the strongest title is the universe one, 
and its cause one. 

As I have said, the effect is inconceivably vast. 
This immense orb on which we dwell is but an atom 
in infinite space, a faintly twinkling star in the 
firmament of Mars or Jupiter, invisible from Sirius, 



22 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



and yet age after age it holds its place and pursues 
its undisturbed path among these balanced worlds. 
And while these worlds with every accession of tel- 
escopic power come forth rank beyond rank, the 
astronomer knows to the hundredth part of a sec- 
ond where to find each of them, night after night, 
year after year. One system ; one cause, and that 
cause a Mind infinite beyond our thought, yet man- 
ifest in myriads of forms, in its unifying wisdom, 
power, and love. " Great and marvellous are thy 
works, Lord God Almighty. Who shall not fear 
thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name ? " 

Thus, from our own consciousness and experi- 
ence, from our own causative power, from the 
causes which we are, we pass by inevitable infer- 
ence to the Supreme Cause, the infinite God ; and 
this inference is equally clear and imperative, what- 
ever our theories of creation may be. 

Still farther, the omnipresence of this first Cause, 
his presence with us, his providence over us, is 
demonstrably certain, whatever may be our theories 
of creation. There may have been specific acts of 
creation, there may have been special interventions 
of his providence for the safety and well-being of 
his children, and such has been the prevalent be- 
lief of wise and devout men in all ages. But sup- 
pose that an initial forthputting of the Infinite will- 
power launched the universe into being, with its 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 23 

multiform capacities for becoming all that it is or 
ever will be, time is but a category of finite being ; 
in the Infinite Mind, past and future, twin eterni- 
ties, are present. He spans the eternities, and in 
every stage of development He is no less present 
than if every stage were a fresh creation. Nay, 
every stage is a fresh creation ; for the omnipotent 
will must be incessant, eternal, else not omnipotent. 
He is no less the immanent cause than the first 
cause. The universe subsists, the vast plan unrolls 
by his unceasing fiat. Let that fiat be for one in- 
stant withholden, the universe vanishes like the 
shadow of a dream. Law is but a provisional fic- 
tion of philosophy, — the non-religious name for 
modes of administration in an orderly universe. 
Law has a real meaning only for potential law- 
keepers, for men and angels, not for sun, stars, and 
oceans, — for intelligent causes, not for unintelli- 
gent effects. What we call the laws of nature are 
laws for us, and we disobey them at the peril of 
comfort, substance, life. But there is no power of 
obedience in the inanimate, unconscious objects to 
which we apply that term. They are no more capa- 
ble of obeying a law than they are of writing epic 
poems or solving algebraic equations. Cut them 
loose from the infinite, unceasing will-power that 
holds them in their places and their courses, and 
no law would remain for them but that of inertia, 



24 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

which would either arrest them in eternal stillness 
or launch them into internecine chaos. 

I trust that I have not a single hearer who doubts 
the being of the infinite Creator and Father. If 
there be such a one, as I said at the outset, I should 
not expect to convince him by argument. I would 
only beg him to probe the depths of his own con- 
sciousness, and I believe that he will find there 
unefraced testimony of the Being in whom he has 
his own being. But I am myself profoundly im- 
pressed, and would fain impress you, with the iden- 
tity in kind of our own causative will-power and 
that which in its infinity we recognize and adore in 
the universe. This will-power is the portion of 
divinity by virtue of which we are partakers of the 
divine nature, and which by its fitting use may 
make us children of God in a far more intimate 
sense than by his creative power or his protecting 
providence. He has endowed us with a will-power 
kindred to his own, that by means of it we may 
fulfill his purposes of love, that in employing it we 
may be followers of Him as his dear children, that 
by its pure, faithful, and beneficent use we may 
make our humanity divine. Be it ours, then, to use 
it as a stewardship from Him, in his work, in sub- 
serviency to his will, to his praise and our own 
eternal well-being. With this supreme aim and 
endeavor let us, my Christian friends, prepare to 



CAUSATION, HUMAN AND DIVINE. 25 

commemorate at the holy table the redeeming love 
of him whose will-power in action no less than in 
suffering, in his walks of untiring mercy no less than 
beneath the shadow of death, had for its expression, 
"Lo, I come to do thy will, O God," — " Father, 
not my will, but thine be done." 



SERMON III. 



"THEREFORE," OR THE WORKING FORCES OF 
CHRISTIANITY. 

" Therefore." — 1 Cok. xv. 58. 

To me the most impressive word in the Bible is 
the " Therefore " in the last verse of the fifteenth 
chapter of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corin- 
thians. The chapter transcends in grandeur every- 
thing else in the literature of all lands and ages. 
When I read portions of it as I stand by the life- 
less form to be borne forth for burial, I always feel 
as if I were marshaling a triumphal procession 
over conquered death and the grave robbed of its 
prey. The Apostle rears a ladder from earth to 
heaven, its foot planted against the great stone 
rolled from the Saviour's sepulchre, its topmost 
round resting on the sapphire throne, and on rungs 
that are successive day-beams of the resurrection 
morning he leads up his tried, tempted, persecuted, 
death-bound fellow-disciples to those serene celestial 
heights where they die no more, and are as the 
angels of God. But he was not the man to show 
gems and jewels of priceless worth and amaranthine 



THEREFORE. 



27 



beauty merely to feast the beholder's eye, and to 
wake idle dreams of heaven. When he has brought 
his readers to the very threshold of the golden 
gates, he converts the glorious vision into a work- 
ing force. He swoops down, and brings them down 
with him from the realm beyond the clouds to the 
dim and dusty plain of common life and daily duty. 
" Therefore " (and the whole power of the world 
to come is condensed in this single word), "there- 
fore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, immov- 
able, always abounding in the work of the Lord." 

" Therefore " is the most important word, the 
one fundamental idea in religion and in ethics. 
Religion furnishes the therefore for morality, belief 
for conduct, faith for character. No truth without 
a therefore can be an essential truth. No imagined 
duty, not backed by a therefore, can be a duty. 
No one can appreciate more highly than I do, in 
their place and for their uses, what are commonly 
called the evidences of Christianity ; but immeas- 
urably beyond all other evidence I cannot but 
place its capacity of shaping conduct and moulding 
character after its own divine ideal, ■ — in fine, its 
clustered therefores, its collective and multitudinous 
therefore, addressed to men's affections, conscience, 
and will, now in strains gentle as of the wind-harp, 
sweetly, softly stealing into the inmost heart ; now 
in thunder tones, to wake the impenitent or sluggish 
soul to impending temptation or neglected duty. 



28 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



Let us consider the therefores of Christianity, 
the truths that involve obligation, constrain to duty, 
and give shape to character. 

First of all, there is no truth appertaining to the 
attributes of God that has not its therefore. Is he 
omnipotent and all-wise ? Then I am relieved from 
the horror which I could not but feel in a world 
governed by chance, caprice, or unwisdom. Cares 
he for man ? Then I can feel safe in committing 
myself to the unexplored future ; I can maintain 
my courage and my working force under conditions 
that seem most adverse, if they be divinely ordered. 
Is he my Father in a more intimate sense even 
than is implied in this dearest title of human pro- 
tection and benignity ? And am I sure of all a 
father's readiness to forgive, and of the helping 
spirit with which an Infinite Father cannot but 
prompt, second, and crown every right endeavor 
and high aspiration ? The inevitable inference is 
the privilege and joy, even more than the duty, of 
penitence and worthy purpose, of trust and prayer, 
of gratitude and love, of constant obedience and 
faithful service. If God is, he should have his 
part, his controlling influence, in my every expe- 
rience, in my every act, in every waking moment of 
my life. 

As regards Jesus Christ, he stands in no relation 
to man which has not its constraining, imperative 



THEREFORE. 



29 



therefore. Our every conception of God is neces- 
sarily anthropomorphic. He is, indeed, infinite to 
our thought, but infinite only in attributes which 
we can behold in man. He may have other attri- 
butes ; but if so, we cannot know them. It is in 
human form alone that we can see and know God ; 
therefore is it that Jesus says, " No man cometh 
unto the Father but by me," and " He that hath 
seen me hath seen the Father." So true is this, 
that no sooner do men look away from Christ than 
their conceptions of God grow dim and distant ; his 
providence becomes a myth ; his fatherhood, a fond 
delusion ; even his detached personality fades from 
the thought ; and in a second or third Christless 
generation the only God that would be recognized 
would be the unconscious forces of nature. Christ 
then lies behind all the therefores comprehended 
in our idea of God. God in Christ is the only 
God that the Christian knows. 

Still further, in showing us God, Christ has 
given us the pattern of a divine humanity, and his 
example is at once our inspiration and our guide, 
if we would make our own humanity in any hum- 
ble measure divine. When we consider what vir- 
tue was before him and is now where he is not, 
— how he reversed the moral scale, and gave the 
supreme place upon it to qualities of character, 
humility, and the like, for which he had to pick up 



30 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



names from the rubbish and dust-heaps of language, 
and to pass them through a cleansing baptism, — 
we see of what immense moment it is that we fol- 
low him ; nor is there an incident in his conduct, or 
a parable or precept that fell from his lips, that 
has not its therefore ; that does not bid us to do, 
and above all to become and be, what is Christ- 
like. 

Then, again, what constraining power there is in 
his love, in his cross, in that supreme hour when in 
the depth of mortal agony he manifested, as on 
earth has never been seen beside, the incarnate 
love of God ! Love has its intensely mandatory 
therefore. To feel it is to obey it ; and he best 
knows Christ who, in beholding his life, his cross, 
can say with the profoundest emotion, " Herein is 
love," and can embody its therefore in those sweet 
and simple words of the old hymn, — 

" Love so amazing 1 , so divine, 
Demands my soul, my life, my all." 

But the clustered therefores which have Christ 
for their antecedent depend entirely on the truth 
of his record, and this is the sole question of vital 
importance as regards the Bible. For me, indeed, 
it contains much more than this. So far am I from 
doubting the divine inspiration of the Hebrew seers 
and poets, that, on the other hand, I am in full 
sympathy with the Christian fathers of the Alex- 



THEREFORE. 



31 



andrian school in ascribing like inspiration to the 
saints and sages of the Gentile world who also 
helped to prepare the way of the Lord ; nor can I 
fail to find rich spiritual food in those Hebrew 
lyrics, which Jesus was undoubtedly wont to sing 
with his disciples, as we know that he did at the 
paschal supper. But these matters, however inter- 
esting, are of no essential importance. Moses and 
Elias are not our teachers ; nor has the Hebrew 
law any claim on our allegiance, except as its 
provisions are sanctioned or re enacted by a higher 
and permanent authority. What it concerns us to 
know is whether the life of Christ is authentic. 

By modes of historical criticism, which, if applied 
to the history of New England, would make John 
Winthrop and John Endicott mythical personages, 
and Sewall's Diary a forgery of a date subsequent 
to his death, it is perfectly easy to show that the 
Gospels are the untrustworthy productions of the 
second or third century. But after more than half 
a century's conversance with the Protean forms of 
skepticism, — most of which are new, not because 
new-born, but because, long ago conquered and 
slain, they have of late been galvanized into a 
ghastly semblance of life, in which by their mutual 
contradictions and inconsistencies they are fast 
throttling one another back into the grave, — I feel 
a far stronger assurance than that of my unques- 



32 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



tioning youth, because resting not on tradition, but 
on evidence, that these Gospels are the faithful 
portraiture of the one divine life that has been 
lived in this world of ours ; and as for the fourth 
Gospel, I know of no narratives of any time or 
land that throb so intensely with the vivid emotions 
which only an eye and ear witness can feel as the 
story of the raising of Lazarus and that of our Lord's 
own resurrection. Were they anonymous, I should 
know that the author had been there ; and in matters 
of less importance, often in a single phrase or word, I 
have encountered, without seeking them, like tokens 
of the personal presence of the writer in the scenes 
and events that he describes. But if these Gospels 
are authentic history, they then attach, not proba- 
bility, but certainty to Christ's claims on our faith 
in all that he teaches and manifests of the divine, 
and thus give to the therefores emanating from 
him and from the Father who sent him an em- 
phasis which could not rest with an added stress 
did they fall upon our ears in words of God from 
heaven. 

The therefores of God and Christ and the gos- 
pel all centre, blend, culminate, in the therefore of 
the life eternal, of which the gospel is full, as to 
which Christ utters no uncertain voice, and which 
is the heritage from God for every child of his that 
is fit for, or, as it seems to me, even capable of it. 



THEREFORE, 



33 



Eternal life, continued identity ; not the power of 
assuming an alias at death and sloughing off the 
old sins with their inherent miseries ; not the ca- 
pacity at any time of so escaping the past that its 
shadow shall not rest on the future ; not a regener- 
ating bath from which the Ethiopian can emerge 
white and the leper spotless ; — but the living on 
of the man as he is, his reaping as he sows, nay, 
while he sows ; for in the soul of man seedtime and 
harvest are synchronous ; what he does, what he 
says, what he wills, he assimilates, makes an insep- 
arable part of his own self, so that sin, not produces, 
but is misery, — goodness, not produces, but is 
happiness, — the visible harvest delayed, it may be, 
for months, for years, for a lifetime, but in the 
interior consciousness the seed beginning to bear 
fruit the moment it is sown. The intrinsic fitness 
of the right, its inseparable connection with well- 
being, that of its opposite with ill-being, is not 
even of divine ordination. It is coeternal with 
God, and were he in a single instance to discon- 
nect goodness from well-being, wrong-doing from 
ill-being, in that very act he would abdicate the 
throne of the universe. The eternal life, then, of 
the Christian revelation is eternal blessedness for 
pure, true, and virtuous living, with no amnesty in 
any state of being for moral evil while it lasts, or 
while its inevitable consequences remain unspent. 



34 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



The therefore of the eternal life thus comprehends 
all that man ought to be in conduct, in heart, in 
soul. 

The truths that I have named embrace, not in- 
deed all of Christianity, but all of its essential 
working force. I think that I am authorized to 
say this, when I find in the catalogue of all saints, 
with equal tokens of Christ-likeness, men and wo- 
men who have these only in common. Cheverus, 
John Howard, Keble, Judson, Joseph John Gurney, 
Joseph Tuckerman, Madame Guion, Elizabeth 
Fry, Mary Carpenter, Florence Nightingale, repre- 
sent the widest variety of dogmatic and ritual be- 
lief and position ; yet who can trace in either of 
these a trait of kindred to the Saviour that is lack- 
ing in either of the others? Indeed, were I to 
look at this moment for those who impress me as 
nearest to their Lord, I should be carried where I 
have the least dogmatic sympathy. Who so repro- 
duces on the earth the image of him who showed 
himself most divine in that he went about doing- 
good, as the Sister of. Charity, keeping her lone 
watch by some pest-stricken victim in one of the 
noisome dens of foul contagion in Madrid or 
Naples ? Were her Lord himself laid on that bed, 
she would not nurse him more tenderly and lov- 
ingly. Why ? Because she sees the typical God- 
man in the sufferer whom he calls his brother, 



THEREFORE. 



35 



and has him, and him crucified, in her heart of 
hearts, dearest and best beloved. Why should I 
scant my reverence for her, as supremely blessed 
of the Lord, on account of what seem to me her 
errors, — some of them, it may be, glimpses of 
greater truths than those with which I would re- 
place them ? She worships the crucifix ; but was 
not God in Christ as he hung upon that cross? 
She asks the saints to pray for her ; and is there a 
saint in heaven who is not ready to pray for her ? 
Has she not always with her unseen witnesses, who 
waft her supplications on the breath of their own ? 
Nay, is there not one, the King of saints, who ever 
lives to make intercession for her and for them 
all ? But when the poor man dies, she will still 
pray for him. And why not ? Who will dare to 
say that any soul of man at death drops out of the 
reach of God's eternal love ? And if not, why out 
of that human intercession in which man makes 
the closest approach that he can make to Him 
whose name is Love ? I would beg not to be mis- 
taken. The usurpations, pretensions, and corrup- 
tions of Romanism are worthy of abhorrence where 
they are paramount, and are among the most just 
and fitting objects of dread in our own country. 
Yet I believe that there is nowhere a more vivid 
sense of divine realities, a more truly filial piety, a 
more entire consecration to the work for which 



36 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



Christ lived and died and ever lives, than in un- 
numbered loyal members of the Romish Church ; 
nor can I see anywhere among Protestants a power 
of faith and holiness adequate to cope with its 
wrongs and errors, so that the best that can be 
hoped is that in God's early time the flame of ar- 
dent devotion kindled at its own altars will burst 
into a consuming, cleansing, purifying fire for its 
falsities, its superstitions, and its tyranny. 

As for the dogmas that separate Christians from 
one another, it is certain that revelation has no 
clear voice ; for equally learned and impartial in- 
terpreters of the Scriptures have drawn unlike 
conclusions from them: and it is no less certain 
that the Spirit of God does not give light upon 
them ; for none difrer more widely concerning them 
than men whose lives equally show that they are 
led by the Spirit. Moreover, these dogmas relate 
to the divine rather than to the human aspects of 
truth, and to themes beyond the scope of exact 
definition. They belong solely to the philosophy 
of religion, which is no more determinate or deter- 
minable than the philosophy of being and of mind. 
This latter is as old as history ; yet it has no truths 
established beyond dispute, nor is it any nearer 
being a positive science than it was in the time of 
Thales or of Plato. But it has kept open a large 
and lofty realm for thought and speculation, and 



THEREFORE. 



37 



by the very unattainableness of absolute truth in 
its infinite scope has nurtured in successive genera- 
tions many of the greatest minds of the race, — 
minds that needed the unattainable to give full ten- 
sion and vigor to their aim and endeavor. There 
is, no doubt, in this department absolute truth ; but 
it is too large and vast for the finite mind to grasp 
in its entireness. Hence the divergent philosophies, 
which are such fragments or partial aspects as indi- 
vidual minds are capable of taking in. In like 
manner religious philosophy has the infinite for its 
field ; and the separating dogmas of sincere Chris- 
tians represent their several types of mental recep- 
tivity, and are distinguished from one another less 
as truth and falsehood than as partial truths. 

These dogmas form no part of the working force 
of religion. Thus the essence of the divine nature 
has no practical bearing. I know not but that the 
triune formula may be more true to the philosophy 
of the divine than my more simple conception ; but 
neither of them has a therefore. The therefores 
spring solely from God's relation to man as Father, 
Redeemer, and Sanctifier, which he is equally to 
all who derive their views of him from the Chris- 
tian revelation. As to Christ, there is broad room 
for speculation in those words of his, "No one 
knoweth who the Son is but the Father ; " but it is 
only what we really know of him that can affect 



38 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

the character. I am by no means disposed to deny 
that Christ's mediatorial work may have its divine 
as well as its human side ; but it is the human side 
alone which can win for him our dearest love and 
closest following, nor do I find reason in the Chris- 
tian character of those who take widely different 
views of the divine side of the atonement to sup- 
pose that they are any the more or less loyal dis- 
ciples for their divergent creeds. Every one ca- 
pable of philosophy ought to have his philosophy 
of religion, and thus to have the mind filled with 
ennobling thoughts on themes sublime and inex- 
haustible. The only thing to be deprecated, as 
equally unchristian, absurd, and mean, is when 
these opinions on subjects so vast and grand that 
an archangel might not dare to dogmatize about 
them are congealed by a freezing mixture of self- 
conceit and scorn into ice-balls with which rival 
sects rejoice to pelt one another, — battles of pyg- 
mies, which would be simply ridiculous, if they did 
not leave on the bosom of society such rankling 
wounds and ghastly scars. 

As to church rites and organisms, I cannot re- 
gard them as an essential part of the working force 
of Christianity, first, because Christianity has 
accomplished its work equally well under a great 
diversity of forms, and, secondly, because there is 
absolutely no divine directory as to these matters, 



THEREFORE. 



39 



since the Apostolic Church in some respects is 
confessedly not a model for subsequent times, and 
in others its actual organization cannot be so deter- 
mined as not to leave large space for doubt and 
difference. I am inclined to Archbishop Whately's 
opinion, that the organism of the Church was, by 
the divine purpose and wisdom, left open, to be 
determined by Christian expediency, and I am by 
no means disinclined to believe with him that the 
episcopal form of church government proffers 
strong claims on the ground of expediency. Cer- 
tainly the episcopal function as exercised in this 
country has justified itself by its fruits, both in the 
(so-called) Episcopal and in the Methodist Church. 
But for the analogous, yet utterly unlike, govern- 
ment of the English Church, there is no justifying 
reason, since until within the present generation 
the episcopal office has been fully as much secular 
as sacred, while all pretense of apostolic succession 
is stultified by the fact that the bishops have been 
nominated and forced upon the dioceses by the 
prime minister, sometimes an atheist, sometimes a 
profligate, so that the archbishop must in numerous 
instances have been conscious of mendacity, when 
in the office of consecration he speaks of the work 
whereunto the Holy Spirit has called the bishop 
elect. 

I have spoken of the therefores of Christianity. 



40 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



I want to say a word as to the peculiar need of 
them at the present time. Man, because he is not 
a brute, but a reasoning being, has always a right, 
when bidden to do thus and so, to ask, Wherefore ? 
Now what reason is to be given for the duties, the 
violation of which where we ought least to expect 
it is one of the salient features of our time ? Shall 
it be expediency ? If one would look far enough, 
he would see that the right alone is expedient ; but 
to apprehend this, one must often look beyond 
earthly probabilities unto the unseen future ; for 
when the coveted gain or indulgence is close at 
hand, the risks of exposure and shame seem infini- 
tesimal in the comparison. Nor yet does the good 
opinion of society offer a sufficient motive ; for 
while society frowns on full-blown depravity, in 
some quarters it tolerates, and in none regards 
with emphatic disesteem, habits and indulgences 
lying in the doubtful border land between virtue 
and vice, which is Satan's favorite hunting-ground. 
Nay, men are often advanced to places of trust 
which open the way to their ruin for the very 
qualities for which in a less fast age they would 
have seemed utterly unworthy of confidence. Only 
a therefore of omnipotent force can meet the 
varied and urgent needs of tempted and militant 
humanity. 

I know that it is often said, " It is no matter 



THEREFORE. 



41 



what a man believes, if his conduct is right." 
By parity of reason, " It is no matter on what 
foundation the house rests, if it only stands." 
There are houses on the sand, which make as fair 
a show as those on the solid rock, till the floods 
come and the winds blow ; but only those on the 
rock wi]l weather the storm. It is of the utmost 
importance to the right-doing man why he is doing 
right ; for his reasons may be such as opportunity, 
temptation, evil example, will silence and sweep 
away ; and I know of no reasons that may not be 
thus disposed of except those which are embodied 
in the therefores of the Christian faith. Loose 
views as to the worth of religious truth and of fixed 
religious beliefs are already having their inevitable 
result in a correspondingly loose, vacillating, and 
low moral standard. Morality never has subsisted, 
and never will subsist, without religion. As well 
might you attempt to raise grapes from a rootless 
vine. Conduct always needs and craves a there- 
fore. The world, the flesh, and the Devil know 
this, and are always ready with their therefores, 
which would be logical and convincing were God 
and Christ and the eternal right out of the way. 
An intense and efficient emphasis is given to their 
therefores by the (so-called) religious teaching 
which substitutes doubt for faith, and parades non- 
beliefs as the last words of science and of truth. 



42 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

Once bring agnosticism from the museum and the 
laboratory into the arena of daily life, you will un- 
chain every foul lust and baleful passion, enthrone 
Satan, and make this good world of ours a very 
pandemonium. 



SERMON IV. 



THE PRESENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 

" The everlasting' gospel." — Rev. xiv. 6. 

Balaam and Caiaphas, as prophets, hold a place 
not unlike that assumed by Renan in his History — 
more romance than history — of the People of Is- 
rael, in which he says, " The J ewish and Christian 
histories have made the joy of eighteen centuries, 
and though half conquered by Greek rationalism, 
they have an astonishing efficacy in ameliorating 
men's morals. The Bible in its divers transforma- 
tions is, in spite of everything, the great consoling 
book of humanity. It is not improbable that, 
wearied by successive bankruptcies of liberalism, 
the world may again become Jewish and Chris- 
tian." I like that phrase, " successive bankruptcies 
of liberalism." Nothing could have been more 
happily said. Pseudo-liberalism has had a long 
series of what it has deemed final dispensations and 
undoubtedly destined triumphs. One of the most 
curious chapters in the history of mind is that of the 
phases of thought, science, philosophy, specula- 
tion, which have been going to put an end to Chris- 



44 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMOXS. 



tianity, but which have themselves come to an 
early, if not an untimely end, and which would be 
forgotten but for obituaries of Christian author- 
ship ; and in every instance Christianity has made 
capital of the bankrupt assets, and has gained 
wealth and strength from the genius and learning 
invested for its overthrow. When I was a divinity 
student, there survived so much of the eighteenth 
century infidelity of England, synchronous with, 
though less virulent and spiteful than, that of 
France, that we were expected to toil through 
the dreary pages of Leland's " View of Deistical 
Writers," — now a cemetery in which he and they 
rest together in a death-slumber that will never be 
disturbed. 

In great part by means of these bankruptcies 
Christianity stands to-day on a firmer foundation 
of evidence than ever before. Feeble defenses have 
been broken down, only to reveal their needless- 
ness, only to lay bare the foundation on the Rock 
of Ages which they often hid from sight. I hesi- 
tate not to say that there are at the present time 
stronger reasons for believing Christianity and its 
Author to be the record and incarnation of the 
divine truth, law, and love, than have been manifest 
in any preceding age since that when Christ in 
person bore witness of himself, and the Father who 
sent him bore witness of and with him. 



PRESENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 

The strongest evidence of a religion must lie in 
itself, — in what it has done, in what it does, for 
and in its disciples. To the individual soul this, so 
far as it exists, is more than demonstration. It is 
consciousness, which if we deny, we can admit no 
other evidence. This was well expressed by the 
man who, when Jesus had touched his eyes said, 
" One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now 
I see." Thus, unnumbered Christian believers can 
say, not " 1 believe," but " I know." They are dis- 
tinctly conscious of having derived from Jesus all 
that they have and are that is worth having and 
being. But this consciousness is of evidence only 
to the individual soul. Perhaps the Pharisees were 
not wrong in rejecting the blind man's testimony. 
But had Jesus passed through an asylum for the 
blind, and every one of its inmates had received 
sight, and had testified that the first object on 
which his vision had rested was that blessed coun- 
tenance, I do not believe that the most stubborn 
Pharisee of them all would have been left in doubt. 
Now it is precisely this cumulative testimony of 
consciousness that we have in behalf of Christian- 
ity. You, my friend, or I, may not be a sufficient 
witness. We may be deluded as to the source of 
what we see fit to call Christian influences. But 
the cumulative testimony of individual conscious- 
ness may be overwhelmingly convincing. Were 



46 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



you to expunge from the world's record for these 
eighteen centuries the names of those who have ex- 
pressed their sole or supreme indebtedness to Christ 
for all that they have been in purity, in integrity, 
in philanthropy, in the gentler virtues of social and 
home life, in the traits that command reverence 
and love, would one in a thousand of truly and 
thoroughly excellent men and women be left ? 
Were you to try the same experiment in your own 
community, in your circle of intimacy, would you 
not have to strike from your list the greater part 
of those who stand foremost in your esteem for 
their virtues and graces of character? Still far- 
ther, of those very good people who disclaim special 
obligation to Christ, would you not find that almost 
all of them had a Christian training, that there was 
a time after they became eminently good when they 
ascribed their goodness to Christ, that their quar- 
rel has really been with his church and not with 
him, and that since disclaiming him they have not 
only grown no better, but have shown acid, acrid, 
or bitter traits of character, which were not so 
manifest while they called themselves Christians ? 
We have thus a long array, multiplying from 
year to year, of those whom their fellow-men have 
crowned, and who cast their crowns at the feet of 
Jesus, and, themselves deemed preeminently wor- 
thy, cry, u Thou alone art worthy." 



PRESENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 47 

But the piling up of an ever greater mass of in- 
dividual testimonies is not all. More is needed 
from religion now than ever before. Men's needs 
of it and from it were never so many, broad, and 
deep as now. The life-work of a true man is now 
more varied and complex, demands at once more 
weighty purpose and more delicate discernment 
than in times of inferior refinement and culture. 
The Christian worthy of the name is thoroughly 
with the world, and no less thoroughly not of the 
world ; and for the former of these requirements 
there is needed a profounder ethical wisdom ; for 
the latter, a more rigid self-denial and a more ear- 
nest self-consecration, than when the world's life 
was more simple and less engrossing. The Chris- 
tian spirit, like the circumambient atmosphere, to 
be breathed and felt, must be in closest contact 
with all objects, interests, and events of the earthly 
life, and yet must retain its own heavenly aroma 
as sweet and pure as in the upper sky. Now there 
are those, we know those and not a few, who as 
professedly and distinctively Christian men and 
women, in high social position, in public station, 
in mercantile and professional life, in situations 
where one might expect to see busy pleasure- 
seeking, or sordid worldliness, or selfish ambition, 
show themselves the close followers of Christ, and 
with undimmed lustre reflect the brightness of his 
image. 



48 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



Then again, as regards the temptations to be 
overcome in a virtuous life, religion has a severer 
test, a harder strain than in any previous age. The 
lower forms of sensual indulgence are more appe- 
tizing than ever before, their grossness more hid- 
den, their relations to things innocent and right 
largely multiplied. At the same time there is no 
earthly pursuit or interest that has not reached 
what seems its climax, as to the estimated value of 
its objects, the eagerness of competition, and the 
success without discredit by the sacrifice of princi- 
ple. Yet there are those who have the full mas- 
tery over passion and appetite ; and there are those, 
and not a few, who, on one or another of the world's 
great race-grounds, and earnest for the prize, yet 
consciously risk success by maintaining their integ- 
rity, and whom neither bribe, nor fear, nor favor 
can turn aside from the right. Now of those who 
resist and subdue the temptations which the apostle 
enumerates as the lust of the flesh, the lust of the 
eyes, and the pride of life, by far the greater part 
profess themselves learners and followers of Jesus, 
and of the residue most or all have been trained in 
his school and have never meant to leave it. 

We have like testimony from many who hold a 
foremost place in the scientific world, and their 
testimony was never before worth so much as it is 
now ; for if science can ever supersede Christianity, 



PRESENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 



its marvelous advance in our time must have 
brought it a great deal nearer the epoch of its 
victory. But it is still true, as it has always been, 
that a large proportion of the leaders in science 
give loyal adherence to Christianity as at once in- 
spiring and satisfying their spiritual consciousness, 
and in full harmony with the last results and the 
highest attainments in their several spheres of in- 
vestigation. During my term of active service as 
a professor in Harvard University, I had among 
my colleagues as heads of the scientific departments 
men, all of them of more than local, some of them 
of world-wide reputation, all of them Christian 
believers, two of them deacons of the University 
Church, and three of them, Peirce, Bowen, and 
Cooke, in courses of public lectures and through 
the press, not doing the pitiful work of what is 
called reconciling Christianity with science, but 
claiming and vindicating for Christianity its 
queenly rank and rightful sovereignty in the 
whole realm of science. Among scientific men the 
disposition to ignore Christianity has, I suppose, 
been most prevalent with the advocates of the 
evolution-theory. Many of them, by no means 
hostile to religion, have professed agnosticism. 
Darwin evidently reached this state of belief or 
non-belief, and I cannot but think that it was from 
the ever closer scrutiny of material forms, while 



50 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



ignoring the Eternal Spirit which pervades them, 
that his mind suffered atrophy, and that in his 
latter years he had no eye for scenery, no love of 
art, no sense of beauty, no capacity of enjoying 
poetry or the higher forms of literature, deficiencies 
which he owned and lamented when it was too late 
to supply them. 

My late colleague, Asa Gray, of Harvard Uni- 
versity, second only to Darwin in the development 
and advocacy of the evolution-theory, in full scien- 
tific sympathy with him, was an earnest and de- 
voted Christian. In his firm faith and steadfast 
loyalty as a disciple of Christ, he found nothing to 
limit or check his boldest researches and most lati- 
tudinarian beliefs as a scientist, and because he 
lived in adoring communion with the supreme 
Source and Archetype of grandeur and beauty, he 
had heart-room for all that is sublime and lovely in 
the outward universe ; his soul was full of poetry ; 
taste and imagination had with him their due place, 
office, and honor, and all departments of knowledge 
were as congenial to him as if none had had the 
primacy in his pursuit. 

We have, then, in behalf of Christianity, in 
itself considered, a threefold cumulative testimony 
beyond what any previous age could offer, — that of 
an enlarged mass of individual experiences of its 
worth and power, that of increased moral demands 



PRESENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 51 

to which it has shown itself adequate, and that of 
culminating science which has not transcended its 
need or outgrown its sway. 

, The next point that I would urge is this : It was 
never so clearly demonstrable as now that Chris- 
tianity, as a beneficent force, has always been and 
is at the present moment the most beneficent and 
hopeful force in the world's history and condition, 
and is therefore preeminently divine. 

There have been three principal types of civili- 
zation. There is, first, that of the Greco-Roman 
world, which was progressive, but in a bad direc- 
tion, and happily for mankind self-limited. In- 
tellectually and morally it reached and passed its 
climax in Athens and in Rome, and thenceforward 
the only growth was in extravagance, in luxury, in 
every form, not excluding such as are hardly imag- 
inable now, of sensual indulgence and of artistical, 
not to say refined, profligacy. It became extinct by 
inevitable suicide. Its vices had grown beyond 
the endurance even of a sin-sodden world. Then 
there is the Oriental type of civilization, as of 
China, Japan, and Corea, which was stationary 
for more centuries than have left their authentic 
record, which at the beginning of this century 
might have been described in terms that would 
have been equally true a thousand years ago, and 
which has had its only progress forced upon it from 



52 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

Christendom. Then we have Christian civilization, 
always and everywhere progressive in the right 
direction, both in its benignant ministry and in 
the proportionate numbers of each several com- 
munity or nation that come within its pale. The 
principles that underlie Christian civilization are 
distinctively Christian, fully developed only in the 
teachings of Christ, and foreshadowed before him 
only and very dimly in Judaism, from which Chris- 
tianity sprang, whether, as Christians believe, by 
express divine ordinance, or, as all others must ad- 
mit, by natural outgrowth. These principles are 
human brotherhood, the greatness of service, and 
community of interest among men and nations. 

1. Human brotherhood. In the older time the 
life of man was a column, with its base buried out 
of sight and its capital in the clouds. A sameness 
of origin and of destiny was not even imagined. 
Men, therefore, were in isolated groups, with no 
mutual rights or obligations. Why should they 
not, then, enslave, rob, slay one another at pleasure ? 
Language retains traces of this sentiment. Our 
word pirate (from the Greek) denoted in the early 
ages an honorable profession, that of an adven- 
turer, when robbery was the only object of hazard- 
ous adventure. Several of the most honored heroes 
in the Greek mythology were pirates. Slavery of 
men of another race was a natural and legitimate 



PEE SENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 53 



right. But when men saw one another as children 
of the same Father, as invited to the same heaven, 
as of equal calling and privilege in the Church of 
Christ, race exclusiveness became an absurdity, 
and slavery was no better than sacrilege. The 
Church so riddled and undermined domestic slav- 
ery that it collapsed and vanished, and could never 
have been revived in European Christendom. It 
had its resurrection in America because the arm of 
the Church was too short to reach it ; it was doomed 
by Christian sentiment long before it ceased to be, 
and was kept in being and strengthened for its 
final death-struggle solely by that worst of all 
despotisms, democratic tyranny. But it now lies 
too deep for the possibility of a second resurrection. 
With it has passed or is fast passing away what- 
ever can hinder the individual race or man from 
becoming all that it or he can be. Human brother- 
hood is free competition in the life race, and free 
competition is unimpeded progress, unlimited at- 
tainment. 

2. The greatness of service. When Jesus with 
the basin and the towel did for his disciples what 
not one of them would have done for another, and 
hardly for him, he created a new order of nobility 
which already outranks all others. Hereditary 
nobility depends for its continued existence mainly 
on the prestige which it lends to patriotism, public 



54 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



spirit, or philanthropy. Men can continue to be 
great only by being great servants. Thrones are 
learning this, and there is not a monarch in Chris- 
tendom who would dare to rule otherwise than for 
the real, imagined, or pretended good of his people. 
Even in war, in itself utterly unchristian, the palm 
of transcendent heroism is passing from those who 
destroy to those who save and bless. Is there one 
of you who can name at this moment a general in 
the Crimean war ? But you all remember Florence 
Nightingale as its heroine. It is beginning to be 
generally admitted, and nowhere more fully than 
here, that specially privileged men and women have 
a right to their place only on condition that they 
coin their powers into utilities, that they use their 
wealth as God's almoners, that they avail them- 
selves of their higher position to give added fullness 
and impetus to the flow of beneficent example and 
influence. 

3. Community of interest. Jesus, in making self- 
love the measure of brotherly love, established the 
principle, till then unimagined, that there are no 
antagonistic interests, that in human society the 
well-being of any one member is, so far as it can 
be felt, the well-being of all, that in their different 
spheres man is to man as the foot to the hand, or 
the eye to the ear. This principle, as between man 
and man, has always been acknowledged, and in 



PRESENT ASPECT OF CHRISTIANITY. 



55 



some measure recognized in action, in Christian 
society. But for ages it was ignored as between 
nation and nation, and until quite a recent period 
nations sought to outwit one another in tariffs and 
treaties, imagining that of two countries one could 
gain only to the other's loss. All this is exploded 
now, and it is admitted that classes of men, com- 
munities, and nations are prospered and enriched 
by one another's successful industry and enterprise. 
This principle is now made the basis of treaties and 
of such legislation as may affect international rela- 
tions, and if any proposed measure seems on its face 
exclusive and selfish, it is defended either legiti- 
mately by showing that it really benefits both or all 
parties concerned, or sophistically by attempting to 
blind the public to its partiality and injustice. The 
incorporation of this principle into political action 
tends to render mutual helpfulness, instead of an- 
tagonism, the prime aim of diplomacy, and thus in 
coming ages to make of Christendom, and ulti- 
mately, when prophecy shall become history, of all 
mankind, a mutual-benefit society. 

The principles that I have specified are already 
so established that they cannot be reversed, they 
are all self-perpetuating in their very nature, they 
are all prolific in means and agencies for the ad- 
vancement of the race, and they thus ensure for 
Christendom and for the world, so fast as it shall 
be christianized, a permanent civilization. 



56 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



Under each of these principles there are numer- 
ous sub-principles which are fast forcing their way 
into permanent recognition ; but there is not one 
of them, nor is there at this moment a single prin- 
ciple, rule, or maxim in political economy, sociol- 
ogy, or civil administration, that has the sanction 
of statesmen worthy of the name, which cannot be 
traced back to, and deduced from, the record of 
Christ's teachings. To be sure they are not all 
written there. Nor yet did Euclid write the rules 
used by surveyors, navigators, engineers, architects, 
builders, and workmen in a thousand different arts. 
Methusaleh's lifetime would not have sufficed for 
this. Yet they are all comprehended in that little 
manuscript which came from Euclid's hands more 
than two thousand years ago. In like manner the 
Gospels contain all the real political science that 
there is, though, were it written out in detail, it 
would suffice to stock a library. 

Now, what I would say under this head is that 
the principles which underlie our civilization and 
must make it permanent, were never so fully com- 
prehended or so clearly manifested in their Christ- 
derived and distinctively Christian character as 
now, so that history at this moment bears fuller 
testimony to the divine and therefore everlasting 
element in Christianity than ever before. 

The reasons for belief in Christianity which I 



PEESEXT ASPECT OE CHRISTIANITY. 



have now specified, are not only more weighty at 
the present time than at any preceding period, — 
they are constantly growing in weight and force : 
they are in their very nature progressiye and sus- 
ceptible of eyer new deyelopment, and therefore 
give sure presage of the everlastingness of the gos- 
pel. Be it ours, then, to become partakers of its 
eternity, of God's own eternity, according to those 
blessed words of the Lord, which, if they give law 
to our lives on earth, shall sound the note of tri- 
umph over our graves, 4i He who believeth in me, 
though he were dead, vet shall he live, and whoso- 
ever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 



SERMON V. 



IMMORTALITY. AN EASTER SERMON. 

' ' Why should it "be thought a thing incredible with you that 
God should raise the dead ? " — Acts xxvi. 8. 

Why should the continuance of life through the 
death-change seem incredible? If it be strange, 
things equally or more strange form a part of our 
daily experience. Were we spectators from an- 
other sphere of being, I doubt whether a life be- 
yond death would appear to us as strange as many 
of the processes of nature which we are constantly 
beholding without surprise. Who would believe it 
possible that a tree whose boughs would shelter an 
army could grow from a seed no larger than a 
barley-corn ? Then, too, life is wonderfully per- 
sistent. Centuries cannot kill a seed. A tree 
never dies a natural death, or rather it dies every 
year, and its life passes into a new outer layer 
which replaces that of the former year, so that, but 
for parasites or destructive insects, the tree-life 
that began to be before Homer was born might be 
in full vigor now. Mark, too, what a multitudinous 
life that gave no sign at Christmas is on this Easter 



IMMORTALITY. 



59 



morning bursting from nooks and crevices where it 
lay dead, heaving the teeming earth, throwing up 
the loosened clods, heralding a resurrection that 
floats in the sunlight, warbles in the groves, clothes 
the fields with verdure, festoons the hillside with 
bloom, arrays the forest in robes of gladness. 

What means still more is the intimate connection 
of death with life. Everywhere death is the min- 
ister of life, and life sustains and renews itself by 
death. The seed, when it falls into the earth, 
springs into life only through death. Its dissolu- 
tion, decomposition, decay, is the very process by 
which it becomes ten, twenty, or a hundred fold of 
the life which it surrendered. Unnumbered forms 
of insect life are developed from the death, the 
shroud, the sepulchre, of the very life which they 
renew and continue. In higher forms death is the 
perpetual fertilizer of life, sustains life, feeds life ; 
and all the life that now exists on the earth is the 
product of death. Man dies daily, and lives be- 
cause he dies. It is only by the sloughing off of 
dead portions of the life that has been that we re- 
tain our hold on the life that is ; and let death 
cease in any portion of the vital organism, life 
expires also. In fine, throughout all nature death 
is literally swallowed up of life ; and as mere phy- 
sicists, as mere observers of things as they are in 
this world, we might raise the apostle's shout of 



€0 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

defiance, 44 O grave, where is thy victory ? " for 
through the whole realm of things seen, life is 
most manifestly and gloriousty the conqueror of 
death. Why, then, is it incredible that in the 
higher realm of mind and soul there is the same 
triumphal march of life in the footprints of death, 
and over the graves in which what we lay is cer- 
tainly not the life that we have known, but only its 
clothing, its husk, its sheath ? 

That man may live on when he dies may appear 
still more clearly when we appeal to the testimony 
of our own consciousness. There is in me, I am 
sure, a supersensuous life, a life the elements of 
which did not come to me through the senses, or 
from the outward world. When I recall the past, 
the long past, as if it were present, even if I am but 
reading records made upon the brain, I am con- 
scious of a difference between the record and the 
reader. The record might be there entire, and 
will be there when I am dead if it is there now ; 
but because the selfhood that reads it is not there, 
it cannot be read. W r hen I say I, when I think of 
my own conscious identity, I have a consciousness 
which the outward world did not and could not 
give me, and for which I cannot account by any 
material organism. There is in my body no more 
reason why I should feel myself a conscious unit 
than there is for a like consciousness in a tree, 



IMMORTALITY. 



61 



shrub, or flower, which is equally with myself a 
unit, an individual, yet evidently without know- 
ing it. 

Moreover, there are portions of this selfhood 
which have absolutely no relation to the senses or 
to the outward world. My moral selfhood is not de- 
veloped from, but superinduced upon, my material 
existence. It is real, intensely real, more so to my 
consciousness than is the bodily life. It is inde- 
pendent of that life. It can make me supremely 
happy in a suffering body, and it has, as we all 
know, made men peaceful, happy, jubilant, in the 
intensest bodily agony, nay, has induced men to 
suffer the torment of consuming fire for the cause 
of truth and right, and called forth their songs of 
glad triumph from the encircling flames. It can 
make me unhappy when the material life lacks 
nothing for full enjoyment, and I know that it has 
often made those who had the most profuse afflu- 
ence of outward goods utterly wretched. Among 
the happiest persons that I have ever known are 
those whose happiness has had no feeders from the 
outside world, who have been for years deprived 
of the power of locomotion and self-help, with not 
an hour of undisturbed sleep or a painless waking 
moment. These persons have been made serene and 
happy by retreating from the world in which they 
seemed to live, and finding their actual abode for 



62 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

mind and soul in a supersensual realm. I thus, in 
my own experience, and in what I have witnessed 
in others, have felt and seen a life that is entirely 
independent of the body and the outward world. 
It came not from the body, is not contingent on 
its well-being, and is consciously superior to it. 
Why should it die ? God has given it a detached 
and separate being of its own. Why, then, may I 
not hope that it will share his immortality ? Why 
should the dissolution of the organs by which it has 
held converse with the outward world be its dis- 
solution ? Rather, has not the body been as a 
prison wall impeding its freedom, and the organs 
of sense mere loopholes in the wall through which 
it has exercised not their, but its native power of 
perception, which may be only clarified and in- 
tensified when the wall is laid level with the dust 
of the grave? 

If we admit the being of God, we admit all that 
is necessary to render the continued life of mind 
and soul at least probable. God is not subject to 
material conditions, and this, I suppose, is the only 
definition that we can give of spirit. There is, 
then, existence that is not material, and is therefore 
not necessarily liable to dissolution, and whatever 
the staple of this existence may be, there is no in- 
trinsic reason why it may not be the substance of 
finite beings no less than of the Infinite. God is a 



IMMORTALITY. 



63 



spirit, and may certainly have fellow-spirits, sub- 
ject, as finite beings must be, to limitations of time 
and place, yet incorruptible and undying. Indeed, 
it is hardly possible that the Omnipotent who in- 
habits eternity should not have created beings who 
are to partake of his own eternity. 

Still farther, how know we that life is in any 
sense material ? It has never been produced from 
brute matter, but is always transmitted from pre- 
existing life. If it be material, the science of the 
present day knows as little of its essence as was 
known by the Greek philosophers twenty-five hun- 
dred years ago. May not life be in itself non-ma- 
terial, and thus not subject to the causes of decay 
which affect and ultimately disorganize the material 
body ? If so, death is not the destruction, but the 
transfer, of life, its retreat from a tenement falling 
into ruin, its passage into a more congenial sphere 
of being. It may be that what St. Paul calls the 
spiritual body for lack of a better name (for he 
evidently does not mean body) is the life of our 
lives here, animates what were else a mere clod of 
clay, and imparts to it whatever in its life seems 
more than earthly, and that this is detached in dy- 
ing, to live on in some other realm of the universe. 
This is so manifestly St. Paul's theory, and he so 
expressly scouts the very idea of a resurrection of 
the material body, that I never could understand 



64 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



how such a conception ever found its way into a 
Christian creed, or how it is still maintained in that 
creed by many persons who believe St. Paul to 
have been divinely inspired. 

The argument for human immortality derives 
great additional force from what I might call the 
authority of experts. We are wont to admit this 
even in matters of consciousness. We accept the 
testimony of those who have a clearer insight than 
.our own. Indeed, the only use that we can make 
of the higher wisdom of saints and sages is to use 
their eyes while we are training ours, — to antici- 
pate by their clearer views those which will become 
ours as we rise to the eminence on which they al- 
ready stand. Now it is of no little evidential value 
that the best men and those most truly wise have 
been and are those who have had and have the 
strongest belief in immortality. I attach a high 
importance to this belief as cherished by Socrates, 
who, though by no means faultless, by far tran- 
scended in all the elements of his character the men 
of his time ; by Cicero, for whom as a preeminently 
virtuous man in a corrupt age I have unbounded 
admiration ; by Plutarch, whose home and private 
life were full of the graces, beauties, and beati- 
tudes which are hardly ever seen except in choice 
Christian households. On this ground, were there 
no other, I cannot but regard the authority of Jesus 



IMMORTALITY. 



65 



Christ as of immeasurable worth. Taking what is 
commonly called the lowest, but what seems to me 
the highest, ground concerning him (for there is 
nothing else so thoroughly great, noble, divine, as a 
perfect man), regarding him simply as a being of 
transcendent purity and excellence, in whom malice 
can find no fault, the most scurrilous infidelity can 
detect no blemish, whom the best men that have 
since lived have made it their highest aim to re- 
semble, and yet have felt that their growth in his 
likeness was more than the work of a long lifetime, 
and that heaven is best described as the following 
of him " whithersoever he goeth," — are not the be- 
liefs, the intuitions of such a being, worthy of our 
profound reverence, nay, of our implicit trust ? If 
there sprang up in him so clear a faith in immor- 
tality that he could speak of it with the same con- 
fidence with which he spoke of the persons and 
objects visible around him, if that sight-like faith 
remained undimmed in the slow torment of the 
cross and framed the last utterance of his lips in 
dying, can we doubt that this faith had its basis of 
reality, that he spoke of what he knew, testified 
of what he had seen, and that in proportion as we 
approach his purity and excellence, our eyes, like 
his, will rest on a higher sphere of being, and 
death will in prospect be to us translation, ascen- 
sion, immortality ? 



66 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



But we cannot be blind to the fact that the 
Christian faith in immortality which has purified 
the hearts, energized the lives, and gladdened the 
last earthly hours of myriads of disciples, has rested, 
not only on Christ's words of eternal life, but with 
few and rare exceptions, with more perhaps at the 
present moment than in all the Christian centuries 
before our own, on the resurrection of Christ as an 
historical and typical fact. I regard the historical 
evidence of this event as so imbedded in the life of 
the primitive Christian age as to be wholly un- 
affected by the mooted questions about the genu- 
ineness of the Gospels. My belief in its actual oc- 
currence has been greatly strengthened by Baur, 
Strauss, and Ren an, the three foremost among the 
skeptical critics of the New Testament. All three 
of them maintain that Christianity, which they con- 
sider as of more benefit to mankind than the aggre- 
gate of all other beneficent agencies, would have 
perished in its Founder's grave, had not his disci- 
ples believed without a shadow of doubt in his re- 
surrection. They, however, ascribe this belief to a 
mistake of Mary Magdalene as to Christ's identity 
in the dim morning twilight, — the beginning and 
source of a series of optical illusions, which, unlike 
other phenomena of the kind, occurred by day as 
well as by night, and to large numbers of persons 
at the same time, and were repeated at intervals, 



IMMORTALITY. 



67 



for five or six weeks ; for all these writers admit 
the honesty of the evangelists in these minute de- 
tails. According to these eminent critics whom I 
have named, the mistake of a silly woman has been 
worth more to mankind than all else that has ever 
been done for them, while yet a God of truth and 
wisdom governs the world. Now while I believe in 
the resurrection, and believe too in much else about 
Christ that I am not prepared to admit as to any 
other human being, I do not believe that there is 
in God's administration of the universe any depar- 
ture from the laws which he has established for the 
twin eternities. But under those laws you and I 
are constantly performing supernatural acts. By 
our will-power we are every day and hour overrid- 
ing, subduing, neutralizing, forces of nature, which 
were else supreme. The more there is of the 
divine in man, the greater is his power over nature. 
Why, then, may it not be in entire accordance with 
the laws of God's universe that the only man who 
has made humanity so perfectly divine that he had 
a right to say, " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father," could equally say with literal truth, 
" I have power to lay down my life, and I have 
power to take it again " ? 

Such are the tokens and proofs of human immor- 
tality. They have all along the Christian ages 
seemed sufficient and satisfying, and their validity 



68 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



is at this moment unimpaired. Yet there is now as 
to the life beyond death much more of skepticism 
than there was half a century ago. Why is this ? 
I think that it is due to the life that we are lead- 
ing. All argument for immortality is feeble, if 
there be not in the soul a clear consciousness of 
that which is worth living on through death, of that 
which in its very nature is allied to God, and thus 
incapable of dying. I should not expect to con- 
vince of his immortality a man who is conscious of 
nothing but meanness, sensualness,. and depravity ; 
for these are a living death which no Easter morn- 
ing rays can reach. But leaving such persons out of 
the question, I doubt whether there is among the 
really virtuous, pure-minded, high-minded, religious 
people of our time so much of the introspective and 
meditative habit as there was in a less fast and 
busy age. Now there is profound philosophy in 
the stanza of the familiar hymn, — ■ 

" Be earth, with all her scenes, withdrawn ; 
Let noise and vanity he gone ; 
In secret silence of the mind, 
My heaven, and there my God, I find." 

The evidence of immortality from without must 
have its echo from within, u in secret silence of the 
mind," in the soul's consciousness of what there is 
within itself that cannot die. I am no pessimist. 
I am sure that the world is growing better. I see, 



IMMORTALITY. 



69 



as it seems to me, a larger proportion than in my 
earlier days of those who have a right to feel them- 
selves immortal, — of upright, faithful, God-fear- 
ing, man-serving men and women. But the life-cur- 
rent bears them on so rapidly, over so many shallows 
and through so many eddies, requiring eyes always 
open before and behind, that the inward eye re- 
mains closed, and they fail to read the record of 
eternal life that is written in their pure thought, 
honest purpose, and loyal service. Look, then, ye 
who sincerely love and seek the things that are 
excellent, look into your own inmost souls, and if 
there be aught that is Christlike in them, while we 
echo with the disciples the shout of joy, " The Lord 
is risen indeed," there shall come to you the blessed 
assurance of the risen Saviour, 44 Because I live, ye 
shall live also." 



SERMON VI. 



A GOOD NAME. A GOOD FRIDAY SERMON. 

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches." — 
Prov. xxii. 1. 

"He made himself of no reputation." — Phil. ii. 7. 

Early in Lent, this year, these two texts im- 
pressed themselves on my mind as belonging to- 
gether, and as affording an eminently fit theme for 
the season, and for this day. They will lead ns to 
dwell less prolongedly than is our wont on the de- 
tailed events of the crucifixion-day ; but they pre- 
sent one of the great lessons of the cross, which 
we may need to learn, in which we may have been 
remiss, and to which if we give diligent heed, we 
may become more truly cross-bearers, and thus 
more richly partakers of the benefits of the Saviour's 
passion and death. 

Of all possessions that man can give or earth can 
yield, a good name is the most precious, nor does 
anything attainable transcend it in value except 
the traits of character that deserve it. Nor yet is 
there any gift that a man can have, which can be 
made worth more than this as an instrument of 



A GOOD NAME. 



71 



benevolence and philanthropy. It is therefore of 
no little significance in the sacrifice of which we 
to-day celebrate the consummation, that it should 
have been said of Jesus Christ that he " made him- 
self of no reputation." The proverb and the ex- 
ample taken for my double text suggest the ques- 
tions, How is a good name to be obtained? How 
to be used ? When to be sacrificed ? 

How is a good name to be obtained? Not by 
seeking it. It is almost the only quest which 
negatives the maxim, 44 He that seeketh, findeth." 
Love of human approbation at the best overshoots 
its mark ; at the worst is the most perilous of soul- 
traps. The love of approbation is indeed an in- 
born sentiment, and has therefore a rightful office, 
and that office is, I believe, to give the soul a hold 
on its Creator and Father through an approving 
conscience, which is nothing less or other than the 
voice of 44 God that justifieth," — a voice which 
alone can fully satisfy this native sentiment, else 
insatiable, which we cannot exterminate, but may 
thus thoroughly sanctify. The over-earnest quest 
of a good name among men makes one more covet- 
* ous of the form than solicitous for the soul of good- 
ness, and contents itself with a mere veneering of 
virtue, which shines while it is kept freshly var- 
nished, but is always liable to peel off or to be 
chipped away. Then, too, characters of this type 



72 KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS. 

change with their latitude, and conform with alac- 
rity to a low or vicious standard, if it be that 
of their surroundings, so that there have been in- 
stances, — I have known such, — in which the 
same man has been in unlike communities both 
chief of saints and chief of sinners. But if an 
unmerited good name be obtained, I cannot under- 
stand how it can be enjoyed. How utterly mean 
and despicable must be the interior consciousness 
of one who walks in a vain show, and is self-con- 
demned by all the good that is said or thought of 
him ! He who wears a mask must also be in per- 
petual terror lest through its seams and sutures 
there be caught glimpses of his real face 

The only good name worth having is that which 
one can give himself, and can call God to witness 
that he deserves it ; and this may be, when one can 
say within himself, " I have no ruling aim, no set- 
tled purpose, no supreme desire, save to become all 
that God would have me be, and to do all that 
God would have me do ; " and when he can 
say, too, in his daily prayer, in w r ords in which 
Holy Writ expresses the mind of Christ in his su- 
preme self-sacrifice, " I delight to do thy will, O 
my God ; thy law is within my heart." But one 
deceives himself in saying this, and falls short of 
deserving and probably of receiving a good name, 
unless the whole of God's law, and especially that 



A GOOD NAME. 



73 



part of it which nailed Christ to the cross, the law 
of love, is in his heart. There is an exclusively 
pietistic type of goodness, though claiming to be 
Christian, utterly un-Christlike ; sincere, it may be, 
but grim, stern, and loveless ; when fervent, light- 
ing no kindred flame. In the days when asceticism 
was regarded with superstitious reverence, men did 
get a good name by isolating themselves from all 
the charities and even the decencies of life ; and 
there ministered at the most sacred altars of reli- 
gion saints whose presence, even in the outermost 
courts of our sanctuaries, we could not tolerate. 
But austerity, separatism, and sanctimony in our 
time get a bad name, not only for those who affect 
them, which is a small concern, but — what is far 
worse — for the religion which they caricature. 
The only piety that deserves a good name is that 
love which mounts first to the throne of God, and, 
thence refluent earthward, makes itself felt in the 
amenities and charities of social life and daily inter- 
course, in spontaneous offices of kindness, in fellow- 
feeling with all that is worthy of it, in forbearance, 
pity, and hopefulness where sympathy must be 
withholden. 

We now ask, What are the uses of a good 
name ? First, for one's self. A good name in him 
who bears it should cherish modesty, humility, and 
the unceasing desire and endeavor to grow more 



74 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

and more into all that the good name includes and 
signifies. A good name, even when best deserved, 
transcends the conscious merit of him on whom it 
is bestowed. I except, of course, the respectable, 
but small and diminishing, class of Christians who 
profess perfection, and whom I cannot pretend to 
understand. Leaving them out of the question, 
those most thoroughly deserving of a good name 
have constantly before them the ideal of perfect 
humanity but once realized on earth in him to 
whose cross we look to-day with adoring love, and 
with him in ever clearer view, they feel more the 
distance between themselves and him than between 
themselves and their fellow-men. They are aware, 
as those around them are not, of the limitations and 
shortcomings of their own goodness, of the earth- 
ward tendencies against which they have struggled 
up into the clearer air of Christian faith and en- 
deavor, of the weakness in which their only trust is 
in Christ who strengtheneth them. They seem to 
have attained only because they are pressing to- 
ward the mark and reaching after the prize of their 
high calling in Christ, and whatever of reputation 
may come to them without their seeking should 
only urge their onward steps in the Christ-marked 
way on which they may grow more worthy of it. 

A good name is also a potent means of use- 
fulness; and in order to this, it must be used 



A GOOD NAME. 



75 



cautiously and wisely. There are good names that 
are lent too readily. There are excellent men 
whose names in attestation of a cause or a person 
are evidence only of their own good nature and 
credulity. I hold in the highest esteem some per- 
sons whose signature of approval or commendation 
is not worth the ink with which it is written. 

But while he who has a good name should re- 
member that it is a power, and therefore to be used 
only in behalf of truth and righteousness, he is 
sacredly bound to shun the example of the servant 
who hid his Lord's talent in the earth. Like all 
other outward goods, it is his to use, to risk, to 
sacrifice, for duty, for the service of man, for the 
growth of the kingdom of God. The spirit of the 
cross gives the only rule by which it is to be held 
or yielded up, and there is hardly a lesson of the 
cross which those who ought to be cross-bearers 
are so slow to learn. Christians, in every other 
respect sincere and exemplary, deeming themselves 
disciples of him who made himself of no reputation, 
are often afraid to say or do what they ought, lest 
their good, and they for its sake, be evil spoken of. 
There are causes of human well-being constantly 
claiming advocacy, causes in their underlying prin- 
ciples as old as the gospel or as the throne of God, 
yet in a certain sense new, inasmuch as every gen- 
eration requires old truth to be cast in new moulds, 



76 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

old work to be clone in new ways ; and simply be- 
cause we are not our ancestors, there must be in our 
philanthropy and propagandism modes, means, and 
measures with which they were not familiar. Now 
many good men, some of the very best men, judge 
of a cause, not by its merits, but by its reputed 
age, and are slow to sanction what in heart they 
approve, if it seems new. How natural, how like 
what is often asked in our day even by those who 
themselves belong of right to the Christian hierar- 
chy, is the question put to the officers who made 
their report about him who spake as never man 
spake beside, 44 Have any of the rulers or of the 
Pharisees believed on him?" A will favor this 
new Christian enterprise if he can see B's name 
attached to it. B cannot give it countenance till 
it has A's indorsement. In more instances than 
I can number I have been reminded of the 'old 
apologue, according to which the inhabitants of 
the earth agreed to raise a simultaneous shout that 
the dwellers in the moon might hear it, but at the 
appointed moment every man, woman, and child, 
except a man in China who was stone deaf, stood 
with suspended breath in a listening attitude. St. 
Paul's exhortation, intended only for the love-feasts, 
" When ye come together to eat, tarry one for an- 
other," is so broadened as to apply to all works of 
mercy ; and so reforms lag and sometimes utterly 



A GOOD NAME. 



77 



fail, because, while a multitude are all ready to 
follow, none dare to lead. The anti-slavery cause 
is a case in point, and a strong case. If fifty years 
ago the actual belief and feeling about slavery in 
Christian minds and hearts in the North and the 
South had dared to utter themselves freely and 
fully, slavery would have quietly melted away with 
the then passing or the next succeeding generation, 
and we should have been spared that fratricidal 
war, with its untold horrors, which was made nec- 
essary mainly by Christian, or rather non-Christian 
reticence. In the name of the crucified Saviour, 
and in the spirit of this day, I would say to every 
Christian man and woman, — Weigh carefully, 
prayerfully, the cause or work that claims your 
advocacy. But if you become convinced that it 
is Christ's cause, God's work, wait for no other 
good name before you give your own. You are not 
accountable to or for those who hold back; but 
you are accountable to your conscience, and to God 
whose voice your conscience is, if against your own 
sense of right and duty you hold back because 
others do. If yours is really a good name, it is so 
written in heaven, and stands there inscribed only 
in letters of purer light for any cloud that may rest 
upon it here. 

A good name is often of unspeakable service in 
support of a reputation wrongfully maligned. The 



78 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



cases are not infrequent in which unfortunate cir- 
cumstances or baseless slander may expose a wor- 
thy person to obloquy. You, my friend, feel sure 
that some one within your familiar knowledge is 
thus wronged. You have entire confidence in his 
truth, purity, integrity. Will you leave him un- 
buttressed ? Will you suffer him to be defamed, 
and be afraid to say a kind, strong word in his be- 
half ? Do you not see, in your keeping aloof from 
him, no faint analogy to Peter's disclaiming all 
knowledge of his Lord when whelmed with re- 
proach and shame ? Will you not rather pledge 
your own good name, with all the weight that it 
may carry, in your friend's defense, and bear your 
part of his cross till it is lifted from his shoulders ? 
Your good name may be the shield to cover him, 
while he proves his innocence and replaces himself 
where he stood before. By thus doing you may 
also have done much more than you meant or 
thought to do. You may not only have warded 
off undeserved blame, but have saved a soul from 
death ; for men are prone to become what they are 
believed to be, and instances are not wanting in 
which men have come to deserve a bad reputation, 
because they first had it without deserving it. I 
could cite, also, cases in which a good name thus 
linked with a name undeservedly maligned has 
been all that kept the injured person from utter 



A GOOD NAME. 



79 



despair, till subsequent disclosures restored the 
reputation wrongfully forfeited. Some years ago, 
in a commemorative service for a friend who had 
ministered at the altar for nearly half a century, I 
recalled a time when in his youth he had jeopard- 
ized, well nigh lost, his own fair standing with his 
college classmates, as the sole champion of a school- 
mate resting under a false charge of dishonorable 
conduct ; and I could not but date my friend's 
enlistment as a true cross-bearer then in his early 
boyhood, and not when he formally entered the 
ministry of the cross. 

In the uses of which I have spoken, while the 
question is of duty alone, not of its consequences, 
there is little danger of the permanent loss of a 
good name, or of any serious detriment to it. It 
may be used over and over again, the better for 
the wear, — if mortgaged, to be soon redeemed ; if 
obscured for a while, to shine the brighter ; if 
loaned, to be repaid with interest. 

As I have said, this day's lesson is, that a good 
name, like every other earthly possession, should 
be so held that, if there be need, it may be surren- 
dered, and sacrificed. Jesus made himself of no 
reputation. The original Greek is even stronger 
than this, — he "emptied himself" of everything 
that was not divine. That the perfect image of 
God in him might remain unmarred and unstained, 



80 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



he counted the loss of all things else as gain. He 
flung away his reputation from the moment that he 
entered on his public ministry. Every discourse 
of his gave affront to the ritualism, the pietism, the 
aristocracy of his people. When Nicodemus wanted 
to hear him, he did not dare to come by daylight. 
We do not know of any actual disciples of his who 
were not in very obscure life, unless Joseph of 
Arimathea were one, and he was a provincial, re- 
mote from any centre of opinion ; and of the poor 
men who followed him, none stood by him to the 
end. John alone was present at his trial before 
Caiaphas, but he made no demonstration of friend- 
ship, while Peter evidently denied him, not because 
he was afraid, but because he was ashamed to be 
accounted as belonging to him. Had the Sanhe- 
drim respected him as an enemy, however much 
they hated him and desired to get rid of him, they 
would not have wanted him to die the death of a 
felon-slave. The cross — a punishment so disgrace- 
ful that the vilest malefactor, if a Roman citizen, 
was exempt from it — shows how literally he made 
himself of no reputation. Many of the early Chris- 
tians were ashamed of the cross. This feeling 
underlies the various heresies which denied the 
crucifixion of the real Christ, who was said to have 
eliminated himself from the body of the dying 
Jesus. It was this same feeling that postponed 
the use of the cross as a favorite Christian symbol, 



A GOOD NAME. 



81 



other symbols having had for a season the prece- 
dence of it. Such ignominy must have been to this 
divine soul far harder to bear than even the slow 
torture of that agonizing death ; for the very traits 
of exalted spiritual perfectness, which might minis- 
ter patience and fortitude in bodily anguish, could 
only increase the sensitiveness to scorn, contempt, 
and contumely. For Paul to glory openly in the 
cross of Christ was to cause that magnificent hero 
and martyr, whose equal the world has not seen 
since he went to heaven, to be whipped, like a 
fugitive thief, through city streets, and chained at 
Rome to a soldier on either side. After the pat- 
tern of their Lord, it has always been the doom of 
pioneers in religious and social reformation to en- 
counter worse than death. Oftener than not they 
have gone down to the grave laden with the curses 
of those whom they strove to bless. Of the names 
now most honored, many bore the vilest reputation 
with the religionists and purists of their time, and 
in making up his jewels God has had to rake among 
the cinders, refuse, and dust-heaps of humanity in 
successive generations. Man follows his lead but 
tardily. He gave the Crucified the name above 
every name. Three centuries later civilized man 
did the same, and the cross now has the most hon- 
ored place among the insignia of rank and power, 
— the symbol of the only empire which has never 
known decline, which holds myriads of souls on 



82 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



earth and in heaven under its serenest sway, and 
shall still culminate till every knee shall bow to 
the cross, and every tongue own as Lord him who 
bore it, him whom it bore. 

The cross-bearers who follow in his train, de- 
spised and rejected of men in their own time, now 
give their names to their ages, and the then great 
men who held them in scorn have a place in history 
only as the persecuters and murderers of those 
of whom the world was not worthy. So, too, in 
our time there have been men who in behalf of 
the enslaved in our land had trial of cruel mock- 
ings and scourgings, yea, moreover, of bonds and 
imprisonment, some of them brutally slain, whom 
in the last generation one hardly dared to pity, who 
now have the nation's gratitude and homage. 

We see at this moment no demand for the en- 
tire surrender of a good name. Yet we know not 
what coming years may bring forth, and some who 
hear me may fall upon times which will require 
that they, like their Lord and Master, should make 
themselves of no reputation. The lesson of the 
cross and of this day is, — Win a good name by 
deserving it. Make diligent use of it in the ser- 
vice of God and man ; and if truth and righteous- 
ness shall ever demand its sacrifice, surrender it, in 
the assurance that it remains written full and fair 
in heaven, and in God's fit time shall be rewritten 
on earth. 



SERMON VII. 



WORD AND THOUGHT. FOR THE SUNDAY 
BEFORE LENT. 

"Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart 
be acceptable in thy sight, 0 Lord, my strength and my re- 
deemer." — Psalm xix. 14. 

In some respects this psalm is the most remark- 
able poem ever written. It is so as a mere poem. 
It contains, hidden beneath mistranslation, the most 
brilliant and sublime poetical image to be found 
among the lyrics of all times and lands. The word 
unmeaningly rendered line denotes a musical chord, 
a harpstring, and the passage, properly translated, 
would read, " There is in God's glorious works no 
speech, no articulate voice is heard ; but their harp- 
string is stretched through the whole universe, and 
along that harpstring pass perpetual strains of 
praise to the Almighty from end to end of the 
world." 

This psalm is also a marvelous compend of philos- 
ophy, — not that the author would have known the 
meaning of philosophy ; but deep spiritual insight 
is profound philosophy, as it is well said, " The 
word of God most high is the fountain of wisdom." 



84 KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS 



The poet begins, " The heavens declare the glory 
of God," and shows how the infinite majesty and 
beauty of the Creator give tone to the faultless har- 
mony of the universe, and are proclaimed in the 
music of the spheres. He then passes to what in 
itself is a still more resplendent manifestation of 
God. The law of the Lord is perfect, no less than 
the universe of his shaping. His statutes and com- 
mandments, if obeyed, would call forth from living 
souls a richer, more glorious melody than can ever 
sound from sun and stars. The poet has in his 
thought a spiritual universe, in which God's will 
is the will of every child of God, — a conception 
as far transcending that of a perfect material uni- 
verse as soul transcends body, and eternity time. I 
know not where else to find so clear and grand an 
expression of the truth which lies at the basis of 
ethical science, and which alone can make morality 
divine and duty of sacred obligation, namely, that 
the fundamental laws of right and duty hold just 
the same place in the spiritual world that what we 
call the laws of nature hold in the visible universe, 
that they are in the profoundest sense natural laws, 
and that their violation is no less a disturbance of 
the true and fit order of nature than the slipping 
of a star out of place or a premature sunset would 
be. Thus we live in two universes ; the one in 
which law is supreme and its subjects all obedient ; 



WORD AND THOUGHT. 



85 



the other, in which law is no less supreme, but its 
objects are displaced, its forces out of gearing, its 
whole machinery disjointed. 

The poet now turns to his own consciousness. 
" By them is thy servant warned," that he is not in 
full harmony with spiritual laws and forces. Yet 
he may be, and so may any one and every one of 
God's children, yet only one by one ; and " I," the 
poet says, " I may bear my part in that perfect 
harmony. To that end, O God, cleanse thou me 
from secret faults, from sins to which my conscience 
is not sensitive, and restrain me from what I know 
to be sins, yet to which I sometimes yield. Let 
them wholly lose their dominion over me. Then 
shall I be in my right place, in harmony with God's 
universe, and shall no longer bear any part in the 
discord which pervades it. Thus, let the words of 
my mouth and the meditation of my heart be ac- 
ceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my 
redeemer." 

This psalm bears David's name ; but these titles 
are not of the slightest authority. We do not 
know for a certainty that David ever wrote a psalm, 
and he could not have written this. It was evi- 
dently written by a good man who wanted to be 
better, — by one who is guiltless of what the out- 
side world calls sins, but is still liable to sins of 
speech and thought, by which he strikes a some- 



86 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



what jarring chord in the harmony with which he 
yearns to be in full attune. 

In preparing for the approach of Lent a sermon 
for my wonted fellow - worshipers, one which I 
could preach to myself as well as to you, I found 
myself irresistibly drawn to this psalm as nowhere 
more appropriate than here. We, my friends, 
have a fair standing before the world. If there 
are any of us chargeable with open or gross guilt, 
I know not who they are. If in the old fashion I 
were to address sinners as a class by themselves, 
" He certainly does not mean me," would be the 
general feeling. Yet when we put ourselves in the 
position assumed by the writer of this psalm, along- 
side of the eternal harmony of nature, and the no 
less faultless harmony of souls in entire accord with 
God's eternal and all-embracing law, must we not, 
every one of us, detect in ourselves here and there 
a false note, a broken rhythm, a string out of tune, 
not, I will suppose, in outward deed or in habit 
that needs reform, but in the very things specified 
in our text, the words of our mouths and the medi- 
tation of our hearts ? Sin, kept at bay at all other 
points, lays siege at the lips, and makes forays on 
the heart. Let us, then, recall some of the partic- 
ulars in which we who mean to be good may find 
that we need to be better. 

1. The words of the mouth. These have a double 



WORD AND THOUGHT. 



87 



importance ; for soliloquy is not our habit. We talk 
to be beard. All our talking, whether answered or 
not, is conversation, which literally means not talk- 
ing together, but being together, or taking a turn 
together. We are accountable, not only for what 
we say, but for its effect on those who hear, — a 
reason why we should put a double guard on our 
lips ; for there is not a word that we ought not to 
say which may not give pain or do harm, and that 
often to more readily recipient souls than we im- 
agine. 

St. Paul says, " Let your speech be always with 
grace, seasoned with salt," salt being the Hebrew 
symbol of good sense or wisdom. There is speech 
that has neither grace nor salt, utterly frivolous, 
not harmful, and certainly to be tolerated in chil- 
dren, perhaps, too, in older persons, in extreme 
weariness, or under the necessity of sustaining con- 
versation between those who have nothing in com- 
mon ; but at best a pause, in nine cases out of ten 
a discord in the spiritual harmony, certainly so 
when heart and mind can find anything worth say- 
ing. 

Then there is grace without salt, acceptable be- 
fore God undoubtedly, from minds that have no 
salt ; yet there is a rich typical significance in the 
handful of salt that seasoned every sacrifice in the 
Hebrew ritual. There are devout and kind people, 



88 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



of slender intellect, whose speech, though utterly 
insipid, is their best, is redolent of piety and love, 
and though it strike a feeble note, still swells the 
harmony that flows from faithful souls. But sa- 
cred words, uttered as a mere solemn form, in cur- 
rent pietistic phrase, or in the cant dialect of a 
sect, without fitness or point, by people who on 
other subjects are not wont to use words without 
meaning, are a hideous travesty of the melody in 
which they are designed to bear a part. 

Then, again, there is speech which is all salt, with 
no grace, — withering wit, stinging sarcasm, covert 
innuendo, words that sound kind and sheathe their 
point only that it may pierce the deeper, poisoned 
arrows tipped with honey; and these often from 
persons of blameless life, sometimes under the pre- 
tense of candor, delicate moral feeling, reluctant 
duty, yet how harshly out of tune with the law of 
the Lord that is perfect, the statutes of the Lord 
that are right, the commandment of the Lord that 
is pure ! 

Equally out of tune is the talk about others to 
willing ears, when it is not true, just, considerate, 
and kind, when it assumes for conduct the worst 
construction, when it gives currency to what may 
be concealed without harm, when it spreads cen- 
sorious rumors which it cannot verify. Such words 
leave a bitter taste in the mouth, and it is impossi- 



WORD AND THOUGHT. 



89 



ble to force them into rhythm, nay, not even when 
their aim is the advancement of some pseudo-reli- 
gious purpose, as when heretics are i]l spoken of 
for the glory of God. 

Under this same head of harsh discord come all 
those utterances of peevishness, ill temper, irrita- 
bility, by which, if ourselves out of gearing with 
things as they are, we are prone to diffuse our dis- 
comfort, to spread the contagion of our disordered 
nerves, and to take care that those about us shall 
be no happier than we are. 

More than life and worse than death are in the 
power of the tongue. Its benignant ministries are 
most intensely needed to make life worth living, 
and on the other hand, had we any standard of 
measurement, we should find that in an orderly 
community, in a given time, less unhappiness re- 
sults from great crimes and gross sins than from 
the cross, petulant, angry, censorious, slanderous, 
cruel speech of people who mean no harm, nay, who 
mean to be exemplarily virtuous. 

I have nothing to say of profaneness, which com- 
mon decency forbids, even where there is no reli- 
gious restraint. But there are sincerely religious 
persons who lack reverence in speech, who can talk 
flippantly on subjects profoundly solemn, and whose 
levity of utterance on hallowed ground comes very 
near to the boundary which they would in no wise 
suffer themselves to overpass. 



90 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



In view of all the diverse modes in which our 
words may be out of harmony with God's perfect 
law, of the manifold occasions for secret faults of 
the lips, and the insidious temptations to open sins 
of the tongue, I cannot but feel the truth of that 
saying of St. James, " If any man offend not in 
word, the same is a perfect man." 

2. The psalmist names, in the second place, the 
meditation of the heart, which perhaps most mor- 
alists would put first, as the cause before the effect ; 
but I am inclined to think that on the wrong side 
the relation is often reversed, words being the 
cause and thoughts the effect. Good thoughts, in- 
deed, prompt right words ; but wrong thoughts, 
bad thoughts, which might be evanescent, are fixed, 
intensified, made permanent by their utterance. To 
utter whatever comes into the mind is a pernicious 
habit. Frankness and honesty require no such 
thing. There are two reasons for suppressing bad 
thoughts. They may be suppressed for conceal- 
ment, or they may be suppressed to get rid of them. 
The former is mean and cowardly ; the latter is a 
sacred duty. If I cherish thoughts and express 
their opposite, I make myself doubly contemptible 
by secret sin and by hypocritical falsehood. But 
if there come to me thoughts which I do not want 
to cherish, of which I would gladly rid myself, and 
which I should be sorry to have recalled, silence is 



WORD AND THOUGHT. 



91 



the surest way of expelling them and keeping them 
out ; while by giving them utterance I insure their 
emphatic impression on my own mind, their less 
unwilling recurrence, and probably their early 
cordial welcome. Shut the lips, then, against 
such thoughts as you would not harbor. Discon- 
tent unuttered is allayed. Peevishness suppressed 
is soothed. Anger left voiceless subsides. Bad tem- 
per is smothered when it cannot reach the air. Cen- 
soriousness loses its sting when it forbears using it. 
Groundless ill feeling towards others, of whatever 
type, if forbidden passage through the lips, loses 
itself in candid appreciation and fair treatment. 
The same principle applies to thoughts that trans- 
gress the bounds of soberness and purity. As re- 
gards every form of vicious indulgence, " the tongue 
is a fire," and transient, nay, unwelcome thoughts 
of evil, else harmless, by mere utterance may be 
kindled into a consuming flame. Thus sins of 
word and of thought may be removed together, and 
the heart in a large measure maxle true, kind, and 
pure by speech under due restraint and governance. 

But negation is not melody. Silence is not 
praise. The absence of evil thoughts, though not 
discord, falls short of our due part in the harmony 
of living souls. There are heart-sins of omission, 
when God's works call forth no adoration, when his 
Providence fails to awaken gratitude or to bow us 



92 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



in trustful submission, when we forget our divine 
sonship, when we let earth shut out heaven, and 
time eternity from our thoughts, when there is in 
us no soul-thrift, no culture of the immortal nature, 
no pervading and controlling purpose of truth, in- 
tegrity, and faithful duty, no consecration to and of 
our lifework. All these gifts and graces of the 
inner man must be supplied, and with the spirit 
which, the more it has of them, craves the more, 
in order that our souls may be in full accord with 
the earth-born souls already made perfect in 
heaven. 

Our text tells us how we may efficiently rid 
ourselves of secret faults and of willing sins, and 
become in word and thought what we ought to be. 
" Let the words of my mouth and the meditation 
of my heart be acceptable in thy sight." " In thy 
sight." A felt human presence is a power. God's 
felt presence is omnipotence, if we will make it so. 
Can we, while we are thinking of him, utter what 
we would not have him hear? Can we harbor 
in our minds at the same moment thoughts of 
him and thoughts that are not pure, reverent, and 
kind ? So far as we make his presence a reality to 
our minds, our words and thoughts are all that they 
ought to be. But you say, "I cannot be always 
thinking of him." Very true, you cannot be always 
saying to yourself, " God is here." There are a 



WORD AND THOUGHT. 



93 



thousand other things that you must think about. 
Yet there may be a latent consciousness of his 
presence which may be sufficient and adequate for 
every need. You have seen a fond little child in 
the room with his mother, to all appearance so en- 
grossed with fresh-bought toys or a new picture- 
book that he forgets that he is not alone. But 
if his mother leaves the room, he drops the toy, 
shuts the book, and follows her or waits impa- 
tiently for her return, showing that the conscious- 
ness of her loving presence was no less real than 
had he been nestling in her bosom. A like tacit, 
yet intensely realizing, consciousness of the di- 
vine presence may so blend with business, duty, 
recreation, gay and festive scenes, that in word and 
thought we may be as true to our God-born na- 
tures as in church or at the communion table. 

This is what is meant by praying without ceasing. 
Prayer in its express form must have its seasons, 
and they can be but a very small portion of our 
time. But prayer has a spreading power, a self- 
diffusive efficacy, so that the fervent morning sup- 
plication may suffuse the soul till midday, and the 
smoke of the evening sacrifice begin to rise when 
the shadows turn. Thus Jesus lived, while on 
earth, in the bosom of the Father, — while he 
walked among men, in unceasing heavenly commun- 
ion ; and as we learn of him, and follow him, and 



94 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

breathe in his spirit, and make his life our law, the 
words of our mouth, as of his, the meditation of 
our hearts, as of his, shall be acceptable in the 
sight of God, our Strength and our Redeemer. 



SEEMON VIII. 



THE LAW OF GOD. 

" The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul." — Ps. 
xix. 1. 

The last time that I preached here, I spoke of 
this psalm as presenting a view of the completeness, 
precision, and inevitable working of the moral law 
of the universe, corresponding to the eternal and 
invariable laws of the material creation. I propose 
now to present more fully than I could then this 
view of the moral law. We call it the law of God. 
It is so in the sense in which it is your law and 
mine. It is greater than God's throne, nay, his 
throne rests upon it. He obeys it, rules by it, — 
else he might be Zeus, or Jupiter, the fickle, way- 
ward, unrighteous tyrant of classic mythology, but 
not the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and our 
Father. The law is inherent in its subject-matter, 
in the very nature of things, and omnipotence can 
no more set it aside than it can make two and two 
five, or a circle equal to the polygon that incloses 
it. A Zeus might ignore the law ; but though he 
held in his grasp all created beings and things, 



96 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



he could not make the wrong right, or the right 
wrong. 

The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the 
soul, which it could not do, were it not perfect. If 
the mountain would have come to Mahomet, Ma- 
homet would not have gone to the mountain. If 
we could twist and bend the law at pleasure, we 
should convert it, instead of its converting us. In 
our sins, great or small, we virtually try to evade 
the law, to get round it, to violate it and shirk its 
penalty, to make for ourselves a law independent of 
it, — but in vain. When we will not keep the law, 
the law executes itself upon and in us, body, mind, 
and soul, all three, it may be. To find this true is 
our unspeakable blessedness; for when we learn 
that we cannot escape the law, we embrace it, take 
it to our hearts, incarnate it in our lives ; and then 
it becomes our light and our joy, and we experience 
the full meaning of those good words of the early 
time, " Great peace have they who love thy law." 
It becomes, too, not our restraint, but our freedom ; 
for when the finite range of things forbidden by it 
is cut off for us, we emerge into unbounded liberty 
of choice in the infinite scope of things excellent, 
divine, eternal. 

It is thus that the law and the love of God are 
in entire harmony ; and his love without his law 
would be a curse, not a blessing ; for we are con- 



THE LAW OF GOD. 



97 



scious that our natures can be filled and satisfied 
with nothing less or other than inward purity, in- 
tegrity, holiness, and God gives us no so sure to- 
ken of his fatherhood as in the inflexibility of his 
moral administration, by which alone are we turned 
to the right and kept in the right. The penalty 
that the sinner must pay is the boon of infinite 
love ; the retributions of the world to come are the 
mercif al discipline of him who wills not that any 
soul should perish, and over the gates of what a 
harsh theology used to deem the realm of eternal 
woe stands in letters of living light the inscription, 
" Turn ye, turn ye ; for why will ye die ? " 

In my infancy, in Webster's Spelling-book, the 
first sentence for children to read, stamped on the 
child's memory by repeated and prolonged efforts to 
master it, was, " No man can put off the law of 
God." I do not believe that the lexicographer, 
hard, dry old man, as I knew him in after years, 
had any higher purpose than to frame a sentence 
of words of not more than three letters ; and yet it 
looks almost like special inspiration that gave for 
the earliest lesson in printed words to millions of 
young minds the fundamental truth of moral phi- 
losophy, — a truth which every soul of man must 
learn sooner or later, if not in this world, in the 
world beyond. 

We have no moral need so intense as that the 



98 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



inflexibleness of God's law have its indelible record, 
not in our formal belief, but in our inmost hearts. 
The youth, on the verge of manhood, plainly sees 
where the two ways part ; but he is prone to say to 
himself, " I may go a step or two in the wrong 
way without committing myself to it. I may taste 
the forbidden cup, yet not drink deep. I may 
learn what pleasurable sin is, and then forsake it." 
Yet more, are we not all, however blameless in out- 
ward life, more or less careless about what are 
often called little sins (though it were well not to 
use the word little about any sins), are we not 
careless about what seem slight matters of duty or 
obligation, in the feeling that they do not affect in 
the least degree the solid, permanent elements of 
character ? A few years ago temperance lecturers 
produced a strong impression on their audiences by 
exhibiting plates representing the action of alco- 
holic stimulants on the interior tissues of the hu- 
man organism. I wish that we could have like 
charts of the anatomy of the inner man, of the 
morbid working of sin on and in the soul. The 
youth would see in what he deems his first venial 
excess a vital organ of his immortal being smitten 
with a gangrene, slow perhaps, but incurable, and 
destined to spread till the whole moral nature shall 
be putrefied ; or if the disease be arrested, the in- 
jury from which it proceeds not entirely healed, 



THE LAW OF GOD. 



99 



but scarred over, and liable at any moment to 
break out afresh with fatal issue. Not only so, 
but in us who do not class ourselves among the 
sinners, might there not appear here and there a 
morbid discoloration, offensive to the eye, and in 
many cases symptomatic of incipient atrophy, de- 
cay, and decline ? The minister of the gospel has, 
indeed, no diagrams to show ; but the physiology of 
mind and soul which it is his province to expound 
has no less scientific exactness and precision than 
that material physiology which the scalpel can lay 
bare, the microscope reveal, and the photographer 
display. 

But leaving the reverse side of the truth under 
consideration, as we prepare to commemorate him 
who was tempted as we are without sin, let us con- 
template the course and issue of the life in close 
conformity with the divine law. 

It must be remembered at the outset that as con- 
formity with material laws produces material bene- 
fits without reference to character, so that obedience 
to hygienic rules will do as much for the swindler 
as for the saint, in like manner conformity to the 
moral law can be depended upon only for results 
of its own kind. Worldly success depends on a 
thousand conditions beside character. The story- 
book theory that goodness always prospers is dis- 
proved in real life, and it is well for us that it is 



100 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



disproved ; for if virtue always prospered, it would 
cease to be virtue, and men would be perpetually re- 
enacting the pitiful farce of those who wanted to 
make Jesus king because they ate of the loaves and 
were filled. Then, too, the various portions and 
aspects of the divine law require all the diversities 
of human condition to make them fully manifest. 
God needs for the manifold illustration of his per- 
fect law, and man needs for example and encour- 
agement in keeping it, that it show its resplendent 
beauty and reveal its transcending loveliness alike 
on the throne and on the cross, in prosperous and 
in adverse fortunes, in buoyant strength and vigor, 
and in infirmity, illness, and suffering, with the 
praise and under the frowns of men, in honor and 
beneath scorn and contempt. I have never forgot- 
ten what was said many years ago by a clerical 
friend of mine on his death-bed, " My words are 
few and feeble ; but the pulpit from which I utter 
them must give them weight and power." Have 
we not, all of us, witnessed in the patience, resig- 
nation, and trust of those mosj; severely afflicted 
such demonstration as no words could convey of 
the peace which God gives to those who love and 
keep his law ? Thus the faithful law-keepers have 
numbered in their ranks equally those for whom 
the world has done its best, and those who have 
endured its severest privations and trials. 



THE LAW OF GOD. 



101 



I would first name health of soul as the certain 
consequence of conformity to " the law of the Lord." 
The saying is trite only because it is profoundly true, 
" Health is the greatest of earthly blessings ; for 
without it what is there earthly that we can enjoy ? " 
Would to heaven that the corresponding maxim 
as to soul-health were on every one's lips and in 
every one's heart; for the highest conceivable 
blessing is soul-health, so that spiritual hygiene 
ought to be our life-aim and life-work. Hale, 
healthy, whole, holy, are all from the same root, and 
express the same quality of the soul, its perfect 
sanitary condition, its completeness, stainlessness. 
We may not dare to affirm this of ourselves ; and 
yet I trust that there is that in our experience 
which can tell us what it means, and what blessed- 
ness there is in it. The moments when for duty, 
for righteousness' sake, in the service of God, and 
of man as the child of God, we have made stren- 
uous effort or costly sacrifice, have been the great 
moments of our lives, — they have given us im- 
measurably more than happiness, — we would 
have incurred what we call unhappiness in order 
to secure them. When, too, our lives have flowed 
on in an even course of faithful duty, with no breaks 
of supineness, negligence, waywardness, discontent, 
or unkindness, with no intervals on a lower plane 
than the table-land on which we can walk at equal 



102 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



pace with God and with man, it has been for ns an 
experience immeasurably more blessed than we 
have derived from any fullness of enjoyment beside. 
Nay, if at such periods there has been disappoint- 
ment, loss, or grief, the current of a more than 
earthly joy has flowed on, pure and transparent, 
through the turbid stream of the lower life, if some- 
times beneath, much oftener above, the surface of 
the troubled waters. If we would only thus live al- 
ways, though it were under the heaviest pressure of 
calamity, and with not a ray of hope as to things 
earthly, there would still be that in our souls which 
would give a most indignant negative to Satan's 
question about J ob, Does he serve God for naught ? 

Then, too, I will not say along with, but an essen- 
tial part of, this blessedness is the consciousness of 
service, of usefulness, of being fellow-workers with 
God for the good of man. Without conformity to 
God's law there is no sure, unmingled, permanent 
usefulness. But so far as the perfect law is our 
law, we are all the time doing good in full propor- 
tion to our ability, and with an ability constantly 
increasing, the one talent, if it be but one, becom- 
ing two, the two in good time four, and so on, till 
heaven shall show what our earthly work has been. 
"Among whom ye shine as lights in the world," 
says St. Paul to his disciples, and it may be said 
with equal truth to all who keep and love the per- 



THE LAW OF GOD. 



103 



feet law of the Lord. To be sure, we cannot all 
be beacon-lights. But at the least we can be 
house-lamps, giving light to all in the house with 
us, shining through the windows, too, so that those 
who pass by shall want to light their lamps from 
ours. We do more good by being all that we 
ought to be than by any kind or amount of active 
service. The constant effluence of a life in close 
conformity to the perfect law of God is an uninter- 
mittent source of blessing to all within its sphere ; 
and he who lives thus, while he will omit no word 
or deed by which he can benefit those around him, 
goes about doing good in all the common affairs, 
the business, the intercourse of daily life. 

Least of all should it be forgotten that the law- 
abiding life is the life eternal, — the only life which 
can live on unchanged in death, — unchanged, save 
that it emerges from the sometimes clouded light 
of these lower heavens into the full radiance of the 
perfect day. 

The perfectness of this law-keeping life we have 
in Jesus, and of all the praises which the worship 
of these nineteen centuries has heaped upon his 
name, the superlative ground of reverence, love, 
loyal discipleship, thankful commemoration of him 
on earth till we fall at his feet in heaven, is that in 
him alone we have the living law, — the law of the 
Lord which is perfect, incarnate in a life no less 
perfect. 



104 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMQNS. 



As regards earthly reward, if there is any lesson 
that we can learn from his life, it is that God does 
not pay his servants in the world's current coin. 
We see in him a childhood and youth of poverty 
and toil, a manhood homeless, despised, scorned, 
persecuted, hunted to death, — a death of ignominy 
and unspeakable anguish, on the cross between two 
thieves, while his life-work seemed an utter failure, 
and there was every reason to suppose that his 
memorjr would little more than survive his burial. 
But while standing on the confines of the world 
which had shown itself unworthy of him, with that 
horrible death on the morrow in clearest view, he 
yet can say, "My peace I give unto you." "My 
peace," — the most precious legacy that he can 
leave to those whom his death will make orphans ; 
and neither they nor any of his followers since 
have doubted that his legacy was the best gift this 
side of heaven. Indeed, can we read his words at 
the paschal table, his prayer of intercession, the 
narrative of his serene endurance and calm triumph 
on the cross, and not feel that we could even die 
like and with him, if only our souls could be suf- 
fused, penetrated, filled with a peace like his ? 

Then, too, this perfect life of his was doing its 
work, and though the world knew it not, he knew 
it. Though Jew and Gentile conspired to crush 
out his very name in the lowest infamy, he could 



THE LAW OF GOD. 



105 



pray in faith for those who in ages to come should 
believe in him; we in this far-off land and time 
were not forgotten in his interceding, loving heart, 
and myriads of ransomed souls in heaven and on 
earth are but the continuous answer to his prayer. 
Nor let it ever be forgotten that it is by his perfect 
law-keeping that he has the name above every 
name, that he is the leader and guide of all faith- 
ful souls, and that his kingdom is an everlasting 
kingdom, his dominion without end. 

He, too, in his resurrection demonstrates the con- 
tinuity of the law-abiding life, shows that virtue, 
integrity, faithfulness, loving service cannot die ; 
for God's perfect law and they who keep and love 
it are partakers of his own eternity. 



SERMON IX. 



CHEIST AND THE POOR. AN ADVENT SERMON. 

" The poor always ye have with you ; but me ye have not 
always." — John xii. 8. 

These two facts are as real now as when the 
words were uttered, and the casual connection which 
they have in the gospel narrative is permanent in 
history, and is a prominent feature of what we call, 
yet hardly have a right to call, Christendom. We 
have the poor always with us because Jesus is not 
always with us. 

On this first Sunday in Advent, when the Church 
begins to prepare for the festival of the Nativity, 
may it not be fitting for us to consider in this one 
respect what would be the consequence of Christ's 
really coming among us, not as he came in Bethle- 
hem, a helpless babe, but as he will one day come, 
in the power of his spirit, King of kings, and Lord 
of lords, to a renovated world ? # 

The poor we have always with us, and the chief 
reason is that Christ is not always with us. The 
greater part of the poor are so because he is not 
with them. It should not diminish, but only in- 



CHBIST AND THE POOR, 107 

tensify, and at the same time guide, our pity for 
them to know that a very large proportion of the 
poor are so in consequence of guilt, their own, or 
that of those who should be their protectors and 
care-takers. Even the blameless and saintly among 
them are oftener than not, in their infirmity or old 
age, thrown upon the precarious charity of the out- 
side world by the worthlessness of those who should 
have had them in charge. Unless your attention 
has been specially directed to this point, as mine 
has been, you can have no idea of the extent to 
which intemperance has been the indirect, yet sole 
cause of the poverty of those who have themselves 
always led sober and exemplary lives. 

Still farther, the compensation of labor of all 
kinds is in* a great degree contingent on the aver- 
age standard of merit and of self-respect among 
the laborers. In any class of operatives the larger 
is the proportion of those whose characters deserve, 
and whose tastes and habits need, small remunera- 
tion, the lower are the wages of the entire class to 
which they belong. 

On the other hand, there is no small amount of 
poverty chargeable upon the prosperous classes of 
society, and that because Jesus is not with them. 
In this city, while there are many employers who 
are rigidly just, many too who are as generous as 
they can afford to be, you yet would find not a few 



108 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

who take advantage of the needs of those in their 
employ, and pay them at the lowest rate that will 
ward off absolute starvation, so that there are many 
apartments in crowded tenement - houses where 
Hood's " Song of the Shirt " might be sung in 
strains broken by sobs and tears. Nor is there 
ever a case of large and bold fraud, whether pecu- 
lation, embezzlement, or bankruptcy, which does 
not sweep away some poor men's dues, or reduce 
to want some who were not poor before. 

Remedies for poverty have been proposed from 
Plato's time till now, and tried on a limited scale, 
sure, however, if successful, to be reproduced on a 
large scale. This is not the time or place to dis- 
cuss them, though I should welcome a fit opportu- 
nity of so doing. The verdict which may be passed 
upon them all was well expressed on the spot by an 
operative in Robert Owen's establishment at Lan- 
ark, " 'T is but patching up poor human nature ; if 
it be stopped in one place, it will break out in an- 
other." Even the elect souls at Brook Farm com- 
plained of one another for the selfishness which, if 
not the sole mother, is the chief nurse of poverty. 
Worst of all proposed remedies is what styles itself 
nationalism, — a plan utterly absurd while every 
concern that the nation has in charge is at the 
mercy of party spirit, official corruption, and in- 
dividual greed, needless when the nation shall be 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 



109 



pure enough not to betray its trusts, and in its 
ideal perfection presenting a most dreary picture 
of a world in which social machinery supersedes all 
offices of individual kindness and helpfulness, and 
selfishness is neutralized, not by the grace of God, 
but by the utter dearth of all objects of ambition 
and endeavor. 

When I speak of Christianity as tending to ban- 
ish poverty, I am far from meaning that it would 
equalize wealth, — a consummation as undesirable 
as impossible. Large properties are needed as 
movement funds and safety funds for industry, 
which without them would be liable to perpetual 
and ruinous fluctuation. They are essential, too, for 
the cultivation of art and taste, and to sustain and 
furnish those who can serve as pioneers on routes 
of social progress and elevation which they leave 
open for all who will follow them. Social equality 
would mean a low level, and a retrograde move- 
ment of the whole body. If Christ were really 
with us, while the abjectly and miserably poor 
would be no longer with us, there would still be 
those capable of large stewardships, who would 
make their wealth God's treasury, and those of 
humbler gifts, callings, and position, who would 
need, but would never lack, the protection, care, 
assistance, watchful providence of those whose 
means of doing good would be the only limit of 



110 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



their felt responsibility. A good God will never 
leave the world destitute of the opportunity to imi- 
tate his own goodness in offices of love for his chil- 
dren. A world where there was no good to be 
done would be only less wretched than one in 
which men refused to do good. Heaven would be 
very undesirable, if those who dwell there have no 
opportunities of service. The term angels (which 
will undoubtedly include earth-born angels) sug- 
gests no blessedness so great as is conveyed in its 
very meaning, — messengers, agents of God's love ; 
and there is room enough in the universe for the 
work of as many angels as earth can give to hea- 
ven. In a truly Christian state of society there 
would be wanting the bleak, barren mountain-peaks 
of selfish wealth, and the equally barren sunless 
ravines in which poverty-stricken life lies under 
the dense shadow of death ; but society would be 
like one of our richly diversified New England 
landscapes of alternate hill and valley, all lying 
equally under God's sunshine and teeming equally 
with harvest wealth. 

How is this condition of things to be brought 
about? Not by agitation. Not by socialistic or 
communistic theories or schemes. Not by tongue- 
work or pen-work, however specious or eloquent. 
St. Peter says (and it is a pity that so little heed has 
been given to his words) that the spiritual temple. 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. Ill 



God's true temple, the temple of Christ's indwell- 
ing, must be built of living stones, and there is no 
other way of building it. Collective Christian 
work can be only the aggregate of individual Chris- 
tian work. The stones must be made alive one by 
one, and because they are alive they will build 
themselves into their proper places ; and still more, 
the life that is in them will pour with an ever in- 
creasing momentum into the stones that lie dead 
around them, till they all grow into a holy temple. 
Moreover, with the growth, the rate of growth will 
constantly increase. The dead stones, instead of 
the attraction of gravitation, which now holds them 
fast to the earth, will feel more and more the lift- 
ing power of cumulative vitality in the living stones. 
And such a living stone may each of us be, building 
ourselves into the temple that shall be made ready 
for our Lord's real and only real advent. 

Living with what life ? With what other than 
the life of Christ ? It is in Christlike souls alone 
that Christ can so be here that the poor shall not 
be here ; and there is no other way in which you 
and I can be of efficient service and no disservice 
in the relief or prevention of that immense propor- 
tion of human want and suffering that has its 
source in sin. That we may thus be efficient, our 
Christ-likeness must not be a mere lustrous glazing 
over of the surface of life ; for the glazing is always 



112 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

in danger of cracking, so that the dark surface 
which it covers will show through ; but it must be 
the outglow of a Christlike heart. Such a character 
is a perennial power for righteousness. We all live 
in glass houses, and in houses with convex glass 
walls in which, for lookers-in, our faults, at least, 
are magnified. Meanness, untruthfulness, any- 
thing short of transparent honesty and integrity, 
self-indulgence to the border-line of sobriety, bad 
temper, peevishness, unreasonable exaction, all 
these - — faults that draw no grave censure on 
persons holding what is called a respectable so- 
cial standing — generate poverty-breeding sin and 
crime in persons employed by us or dependent 
upon us. The office, the shop, the kitchen, are 
seminaries of good or bad morals, and thus, to a 
degree that cannot be overestimated, the procreant 
cradles of prosperity or of want and of ultimate 
pauperism. If there are merchants whose clerks 
in after-life always reflect credit upon them, it is 
not because their clerks are better than other young 
men at the outset, but because they imbibe senti- 
ments of rectitude and honor from their employers ; 
while who can say how many of those who have in- 
curred shame and ruin learned their first lessons in 
depravity from notions and practices, loose and of 
doubtful right, yet not criminal or disgraceful, in 
which they were trained on their entrance upon a 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 



113 



business life ? In the family, too, it can hardly be 
but that the faults of employers are often the 
causes of the sins of those who serve them, and 
far oftener than is imagined must it lie at the 
disposal of the heads or the adult members of a 
household, whether those who go from its service to 
homes of their own shall make those homes thrifty 
and well-ordered, or nurseries of such habits as 
must issue in want and misery. In view of our re- 
sponsibility for those thus in various ways neces- 
sarily under our shaping and guiding influence, we 
may well borrow our Saviour's words, " For their 
sakes I sanctify myself." 

We need also to be Christlike in our outlook on 
society, and especially on the least virtuous portion 
of it. Hopefulness was an essential element in 
Christ's saving power, and it is so in that of his 
Church. There may be exceptions, but fewer than 
is commonly believed, to the truth that, for good or 
evil, men tend to be what they are expected to be. 
The officers of the Concord Reformatory told me 
a few weeks ago that of the seemingly reformed 
men under their charge, there is hardly ever an 
instance of the relapse into vice or crime of one 
who has been kindly treated, while those who are 
treated as criminals still are always liable to be- 
come criminals again. By our hopefulness for 
those whose wrong-doing of any kind falls under 



114 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

our immediate cognizance, by regarding their pen- 
itence and good resolutions as genuine, by ignoring 
a worse past so long as there is promise of a better 
future, by acting in the spirit of our Saviour's 
words, " Go, and sin no more," we may save souls 
from death, and lives from ruin. Instances are not 
wanting in which hopeful clemency has redeemed, 
for a prosperous and useful career, one who else 
would have been among the refuse of the commu- 
nity. Not only are we saved by hope ; but by hojDe 
we may save those who else were lost. 

I come now to what is commonly called charity, 
though in character, influence, and hope we have 
the better part of charity, — that which energizes, 
guides, and hallows all the rest. 

I am glad to know that there are many of you 
who are treating the problem of pauperism in the 
only Christian and efficient way, by giving your- 
selves, with heart and soul, with mind and strength, 
to the various forms of Christian work which the 
needs of those around you are constantly demand- 
ing. Among these forms supreme stress should 
always be laid on those that have a bearing on 
character, on the aid and encouragement of indus- 
try, on industrial education, on the forming of 
habits of self-respect and independence, on all that 
raises the tone of moral sentiment, on the indirect, 
often the wisest, as well as the direct, means of reli- 



CHRIST AND THE POOR. 



115 



gious influence. Your meeting last Wednesday, 
to organize your industrial work for the winter, 
was as truly an advent service as that which we 
are holding now, and your employment-room re- 
ceives the consecration of a temple of worship 
from the thoughtful kindness with which you ward 
off penury and bestow with relief the redeeming 
consciousness of earning it. Most efficient of all 
services is the virtuous and religious training of 
orphaned and imperiled children. Pauperism is 
hereditary. There are families that have handed 
down the brand and curse for two centuries and 
more. Genealogists no longer confine themselves 
to the lines of transmitted genius and excellence ; 
but pains have been taken to disinter the pedigree 
of want, shame, and sin. I have in distinct mem- 
ory three such ancestral records, with minute de- 
tails of personal history, — cases in which of many 
scores of the progeny of a single pauper pair not 
one in twenty had risen to the lowest level of 
decent life, not a single one above it, and all the 
residue had been burdens upon public charity when 
not in prison. By your Sunday-schools, your 
asylums, your industrial training, you know not 
how many of these baleful entails you may dock, 
how many lines of worthy heredity may date from 
your ministry. You would be surprised at some 
names, not unfamiliar to you, of men in prominent 



116 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

positions in this city, in this State, and in the na- 
tion, who have owed all that they are, and all that 
their posterity will be, to the Christian benevolence 
that rescued them in early childhood from sur- 
rounding and contagious evil ; and I am glad to re- 
member of some such men, that they never forgot 
44 the rock whence they were hewn and the hole of 
the pit whence they were digged," and delighted to 
render to children exposed as they had been such 
mercy as had been their own salvation. 

Meanwhile, in the relief of bodily wants which 
press upon your charity on the approach of winter, 
you will not forget that Christ incarnated, and 
that the Christlike must incarnate too, the precept 
of the old prophet, "that thou hide not thyself 
from thine own flesh." He touched the lepers that 
he healed, laid his hands on the eyes to which he 
gave sight. The gift may feed or clothe the body; 
the gift with the giver will nourish, strengthen, and 
gladden the soul. Human influence, mind on mind, 
heart on heart, is the truest charity. On this 
ground I have felt greatly interested in the ministry 
to the sick poor which you have largely aided in 
inaugurating, — the sending to them nurses who 
can teach them how to become nurses themselves, 
and can carry with them much of the aroma of the 
Christian love which starts them on their mission. 

I have had time merely to touch on topics on 



CHRIST AND THE POOR, 



117 



which I would gladly say more. I have endeavored 
to point out the way in which we may best prepare 
for the real advent of him without whose coming 
the poor must still be here. By a life conformed 
to his loving spirit, we may each of us create around 
himself or herself an advent circle in which he will 
be with us and with those whom we help and bless 
in his name. These circles will multiply till at 
length they run, together, and the cry shall go up 
from the renovated world, "The Lord has come." 



SEKMON X. 



CHURCH-BUILDING. 

"Ye, as living stones, are built up a spiritual temple." — 
1 Peter ii. 5. 

When I preached here on Advent Sunday, I 
quoted this text, and I now ask you to look a little 
more fully into its meaning. The figure of house- 
building is a very favorite one with the Apostles, 
especially with St, Paul. You remember where he 
speaks of the different sorts of materials with which 
men build on Jesus Christ, the one foundation, 
Beside, he also uses the term edify and its deriva- 
tives no less than twenty-one times ; and edifying, 
as many of you know, means house - building, as 
does the Greek word which it represents. Thus 
when we speak of the building up of character or 
of the building up of a church, we use language 
that has the highest apostolic sanction. But we 
differ from St. Paul in one important particular. 
Do you suppose that he would ever have thought 
of character-building and church-building as two 
separate or separable concerns ? That he would 
for a moment have thought of the latter as possible 



CHUB CH-B UILDING. 



119 



without the former ? of a church not built of living 
stones ? Yet the two are separate in our common 
use of the terms. 

We speak familiarly of the building up of a 
church. Suppose we should inquire into the modes 
employed, especially in communities where there is 
a struggle for existence among rival churches, and 
each hopes to avail itself of the law of the survival 
of the fittest. The building up is sometimes at- 
tempted by an attractive musical service ; some- 
times by dancing and theatricals ; and I was once 
shown a cooking range and a well stocked china- 
closet as the means of grace by which that particu- 
lar church was going to get the advantage of all 
the others, to which I wanted to rejoin, " What ! 
Have ye not houses to eat and drink in ? or de- 
spise ye the church of God ? " Sometimes the in- 
strument employed in building is a minister who 
will draw, not one who will instruct or impress his 
own congregation in a godly wise, but one who 
shall win outsiders by his eloquence or oratory. 
The aim is sometimes specially denominational; 
but in the attempt to build up a sect, I do not find 
that the endeavor is to show in the structure more 
genuinely living stones, but simply to get stones to- 
gether of whatever quality ; and a stone that was 
of no worth where it belonged before, is accepted 
as a godsend when it can be filched from the wall 



120 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



of a neighboring church. These methods are often 
successful in their way, — how successful, at the 
best, I think, may be learned from what a minister 
not long ago said to me, " We have now in our 
church everything that can be desired except the 
pervading interest which I long to see in religion 
as a personal concern." 

With many of these methods we indeed have 
nothing to do. Yet the building up of itself col- 
lectively as a church is a necessity imposed by Pro- 
vidence on every church, however prosperous ; for 
death and change are perpetually creating voids 
that crave to be filled. Let us consider, then,- this 
matter of church-building. What is the object of 
it? You would answer, of course, The honor, in- 
terest, and growth of the Christian religion. But 
what is the Christian religion good for ? I think 
that you would acquiesce in my answer, — To build 
up Christlike characters ; to make Christlike men 
and women. Does it serve any other purpose ? 
You may answer, It has, beside, an important 
mission in shaping human society. This I grant, 
if you will omit the beside. I do not believe that 
it is of any worth in shaping society except through 
the Christlike men and women that it makes. 
Suppose Christianity a universal religion in form 
and profession, and there were yet no creation of 
Christlike men and women, do you think that the 



CHUECH-B UILDING. 



121 



world would be any the better for the change ? All 
Europe, except its southeastern corner, calls itself 
Christian. Think of the many millions of men de- 
barred from home-life and productive industry that 
they may be in readiness at briefest warning to 
slay their fellow-Christians, as by a strange irony 
they call them, — of the myriads so low in the social 
scale that the first step of ascent is higher than 
their strained vision can reach, — of the myriads 
so born and nurtured in sin that they know no dif- 
ference between right and wrong, — of the thou- 
sands from whose high position and large ability 
there never goes forth a generous deed or thought. 
In this waste you will see here and there a sunny 
spot made luminous by some really Christlike per- 
son, a pastor in a mountain village, a man of elo- 
quent lips and more eloquent life in a great metro- 
polis, a Bible-reader in London slums, a Sister of 
Mercy in the malarial dens of Naples, a man of 
large wealth and broad influence who measures 
his responsibility by his opportunities and means. 
In this country it is only the multiplication of 
such luminous spots that can arrest the tendency 
in Western to become like Eastern Christendom. 
Here you have on the map of the two continents, 
exhibited on a large scale, the two sorts of mate- 
rials that can be employed in church-building ; and 
the error of the builders of our individual churches 



122 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



is that they are very indifferent in their choice of 
materials, as ready to use earth-encrusted stones 
as living stones. 

But how are we to get the living stones ? I 
would, first of all, say, Be yourselves such stones, 
and thus, for thus you best can, multiply them. In 
the building up of a church too much stress is laid 
on the minister's part. My own professional self- 
respect would prevent me from undervaluing the 
minister's work, and least of all could I do it in 
this presence, with the blessed memories of as loyal 
and efficient service as wise master-builders ever 
rendered. But the more there is in the minister, 
the more does he see and feel the need of the right 
living stone always in its right place in the temple. 
They who should be, and perhaps mean to be, his 
chief helpers are often his chief hindrances, if there 
are in them glaring faults or deficiencies, though 
coupled with resplendent excellencies, or if, them- 
selves blameless, they lack the spirit of propagan- 
dism, and are content with such driblets of the 
water of life as they can catch in their own little 
gill-cups, instead of opening the flood-gates of the 
spring and proclaiming, " Whosoever will, let him 
take the water of life freely." 

Living stones we should be, permeated with the 
life of Christ. To this end, we need to be inti- 
mately conversant with him. I do not mean, to 



CHURCH-B UILDING. 



123 



read or to know all about hiin, but to feel him as 
of our near kindred. There is no intimate type of 
goodness that has not its personal element. Our 
home virtues in their purity and fullness grow from 
our home loves ; our social virtues, from our felt 
relations with those in the smaller and the larger 
circle ; our heart-charities, from our fellow-feeling 
with their objects. But for the whole sisterhood 
of virtues there is no inspiration like that of getting 
near the heart of Jesus, breathing in the loveliness 
and beauty of his spirit, tracing its outflow in his 
walk among men. As we muse over his prayers, 
we learn to pray with him. As we contemplate his 
resignation and submission, we find it in our hearts 
to say, Father, thy will be done. As we meditate 
on his life of loving service, we come to feel the 
blessedness of service, and to know that the only 
true life is that of going about doing good. To be 
living stones in the temple, we must make his life 
ours, in the sense in which St. Paul says, " To me 
to live is Christ." 

Then comes, if I may so speak, the translating 
of his life into ours ; for the true following of him 
is not imitation, but translation. There are a thou- 
sand things which he did which we cannot do, per- 
haps ought not to do. There are a thousand things 
for us to do which were out of the question for him, 
with his surroundings. It is objected by some to 



124 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

Christ's life and teachings as a directory in con- 
duct, that they are not adapted to our time. My 
only answer is, If they were, they would not be 
adapted to all time. On the ground on which this 
objection is raised there ought to be a fresh moral 
code and an exemplar of it for every age and com- 
munity. Were you to write out in detail the moral 
law in its application to all conditions and cases 
here and now, you would have, not a volume, but a 
library, and a century hence almost the whole of it 
would need to be written over again, then, as now, 
to very little purpose. I think that if I had a vol- 
ume of detailed rules for my daily conduct, I should 
often be at a loss for the right chapter and section. 
But I do not believe that there ever has been or 
will be or can be an occasion, when if you or I were 
acquainted with Christ, as we can be if we will, we 
could not answer without a moment's hesitation the 
question, What would Jesus be or think, say or do, 
under like circumstances ? Now it is those who 
will ask and answer this question, and abide by the 
answer, that are the flawless living stones in the 
spiritual temple. 

This is indeed a high standard, and my own self- 
consciousness would make me slow to speak other- 
wise than lovingly and hopefully of those who are 
conscious of falling short of it, yet aim to reach it. 
But if they love the Church of God, it may be for 



CHURCH-B UILDING. 



125 



them an added motive to circumspection and dili- 
gent self-culture, that with every accession of spir- 
itual life in their own souls they are adding just 
so much to the strength and beauty of the walls 
of their Zion. 

But in the living stones of the spiritual temple 
there must be more than blamelessness of life and 
character. The Church, so long as there is a world 
outside of it, lives not for itself alone, but for the 
redemption of mankind, — the army of the living 
God, with " Freely ye have received ; freely give," 
for the motto on its standard. It is not enough that 
the individual church makes its annual contribution 
to some public treasury. The actual doing of good 
is an essential part of the Christlike character, and 
is equally a most essential means of its growth. I 
am reminded of a wise saying of Judge White, 
whom many of you knew. When the Board of 
Commissioners for Foreign Missions asked to be 
incorporated, the measure was opposed in the Mas- 
sachusetts legislature on the ground that there was 
so little of religion among us that we could not 
afford to give any of it away. Judge White, who 
was then in the Senate, rejoined, " Religion is one 
of those commodities, of which the more we export, 
the more we have at home." So it proved. Not 
the mere money-giving, but the inquiry into the 
needs of heathendom, and the humane sympathies 



126 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



thus called forth, roused the (so-called) orthodox 
churches of New England from a lethargy, nay, 
from what seemed a death slumber in which they 
had lain for more than half a century. The result 
is precisely the same in any individual church 
which gives, not money merely, but earnest and 
faithful work. It receives much more than it gives. 
It best builds itself up when it is building up any 
enterprise in behalf of ignorant, needy, suffering 
humanity outside of itself ; and this enhanced spir- 
itual life of the church is the aggregate of the in- 
creased spiritual vitality of its individual members, 
every one of whom is enriched by gift, effort, or 
sacrifice, receiving, not interest upon his investment 
in Christian work, but much more than its entire 
principal in the fuller inflow of the spirit of the 
Divine Master into his own soul. 

Suppose an individual church thus built entirely 
or chiefly of living stones, the one pervading aim 
and spirit of those who have its interests at heart 
being the growth of Christ-likeness in themselves 
and in the surrounding world. What would be the 
result ? 

The least that we can say is that such a church 
would more than keep itself in repair. It would 
suffer depletion only at the hands of Providence, 
and the life that thus necessarily passed from it to 
heaven or to other earthly abodes would be more 



CHUECH-B UILDING. 



127 



than replaced by the new life within its own pale. 
None would willingly leave such a church. If the 
young people trained within its walls saw that it 
was really the house of God and the gate of hea- 
ven to their elders, they would be slow to seek 
health for their souls elsewhere. Where there was 
the constant stress of religious influence of the 
purest and highest type, they would want no other 
spiritual home. The disease of the 44 itching ear," 
the craving for excitement, the longing for " fresh 
woods and pastures new," would no longer infect 
the worshipers; for there can be no doubt that 
with the seeming levity and frivolity with which 
some persons, especially young people, flit from 
church to church, is often blended a latent feeling 
that under the special ministration which they are 
tempted to forsake they can see but faint traces 
of the spiritual life that ought to be. The worst 
of the case is that in none of our churches, so far 
as I know, is there the supreme stress that ought 
to be laid on living stones in church-building, so 
that too often those who change their church-be- 
longings, in the language of the old hymn, 44 shift 
the place, yet keep the pain." 

Still farther, such a church as I have supposed 
would hold no second place among the moral forces 
of its time and land. However obscure its geo- 
graphical site, spiritually it would stand as on a 



128 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

mountain summit, and all eyes would be turned 
toward it. It would shed gladdening and guiding 
rays near and far. It would furnish a type of 
church-building which would be eagerly copied, and 
would multiply its own likeness, till, so far from 
continuing exceptional, it would tend, slowly it may 
be, but inevitably, to render any other type excep- 
tional. It would silence caviling, and turn skepti- 
cism into faith. It would furnish precisely the an- 
tidote for infidelity which alone can be efficient in 
these fast days of ours. The time was, and not 
long ago, when men who doubted the divineness of 
Christianity and its Founder could be persuaded 
to study its evidences, and to make themselves mas- 
ters of its contents, so as to determine its claims by 
its intrinsic merits and its place in the world's his- 
tory. This whole mass of evidence remains, stable, 
impregnable, adequate. But in the rush of nov- 
elty, and the rapidity with which the newest things 
are growing obsolete, the only evidence which can 
gain men's attention, reach their minds, touch their 
hearts, win them to the love and service of Christ, 
is that which they can see and hear and know in 
Christianity as incarnate in its professed disciples. 
While we thank God for the gospel as our charter 
of the life eternal, let us never forget that with his 
unspeakable gift comes to us a corresponding re- 
sponsibility for showing to those around us that it 
has not been bestowed upon us in vain. 



SEEMON XL 



GOD IN CHRIST. 

"The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men." — 
Acts xiv. 11. 

So said the people of Lystra, and they gave 
voice to the belief in the incarnation of the Divine, 
which has borne a large part in all the ethnical 
religions. This belief has its converse in the apo- 
theosis of the human, to such a degree that the 
pantheon of the old world, of Greece especially, 
has more names than we can number of men pre- 
eminent for rank, or heroism, or bold adventure. 
These twin beliefs rest on the essential interdepen- 
dence of man's conception of the human and of 
the Divine. Humanity is the only material from 
which divinity can be framed or imagined. Man of 
necessity makes God or gods after his own image 
or that of his kind. Human attributes are the 
only attributes that man knows or can conceive 
of. The Supreme Being may have attributes en- 
tirely extra-human in kind as well as in degree ; 
but if so, man cannot know them, nay, not even 
by revelation ; for the language of the revelation 



130 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



would be to him as an unknown tongue. In order 
to comprehend these non-human traits of the Di- 
vine nature, he must become a partaker of them : 
and it is certainly not improbable that in a higher 
state of being we may learn more of God than we 
can now know by deriving from him powers and 
properties of mind and soul, which are now his, 
but not ours. On the other hand, it is conceivable 
that the Divine Being may seem to us possessed of 
different and separable attributes simply because 
our imperfect vision decomposes the radiance from 
the sapphire throne, as the prism breaks into rays 
of varied hue the pure white light of the sun. It 
may be that J ohn beheld in a moment of special 
illumination the glory of the Most High, and told 
what he saw, when he said, " God is love," and 
that what we call infinite power and wisdom, per- 
fect holiness, justice, and goodness, are but the 
outrayings and outgoings of eternal love. Yet 
we who have not had the open vision are con- 
strained to make our thought of God complex as is 
our own self-consciousness, and thus to give their 
respective places to the several infinities and per- 
fections which we term Divine attributes. 

Gods in the likeness of men have always been 
believed in. Even fetichism and the lowest forms 
of idolatry ascribe human traits to the objects of 
worship, often coarse lusts and appetites, always 



GOD IN CHRIST. 



131 



such forms of truculence and vindictive wrath as 
are prevalent among the worshipers, The Greeks, 
whose poetic and sesthetic culture is the wonder and 
glory of the ages, were not a virtuous or a virtue- 
loving people, and their mythology, incomparably 
beautiful in its kind, is utterly lacking in the 
beauty of holiness, because there was none of it in 
the typical men and women after whose likeness 
their gods were shaped. Rome in her earlier days 
had a purer morality, and therefore her gods were 
more decent than the corresponding deities of 
Greece. But her gods were genuine Romans. In 
studying the character of the elder Cato, who in 
his time was regarded as a man of unsurpassed ex- 
cellence, I was moved to open my New Testament 
at the Beatitudes, and while Cato possessed almost 
every virtue not specially blessed by Christ, I 
found that there was not one of the Beatitudes in 
which he, the best of the Romans, could have 
claimed a part ; and there are none of the Roman 
divinities who possessed any one of these virtues. 

The Hebrews had a higher conception of God 
than any other pre-Christian people, and my belief 
is that they had a larger measure of Divine inspi- 
ration than the rest of the ancient world. But their 
greatest and best men often manifested a fierce 
integrity, a merciless righteousness, a vindictive 
patriotism. The Hebrews had before them the 



132 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



image of Moses killing the Egyptian and hiding him 
in the sand, of Samuel hewing Agag in pieces, of 
Elisha cursing the rude boys that laughed at his 
bald head, and, though not without some prophetic 
gleams of a loftier faith, their current representa- 
tions of Jehovah had the same limitations that were 
to be found in their heroes and saints. The pecu- 
liarly evangelical traits of character were held in 
very low esteem among them. They had not even 
respectable names for them ; and the evangelists 
had to pick up names for what we deem cardinal 
virtues from the rubbish and dust-heaps of lan- 
guage, and to baptize them for Christian use. The 
majesty of a lowly spirit, the greatness of humility, 
the magnanimity of forbearance, the nobleness of 
service, were not recognized till the coming of him 
who reversed the moral scale, and gave supremacy 
to qualities which before were, like himself, " de- 
spised and rejected of men." 

Therefore was it that men's highest conceptions 
of God lacked those traits which are emphatically 
denoted when Christ says, " He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father." In perfect humanity alone 
could man see God. But where has perfect hu- 
manity been beheld save in Christ? Good men 
there have been, indeed, all along the ages, — 
Christlike men, rarely before him, often since his 
time and under his training ; and it has been our 



GOD IN CHRIST. 



133 



great joy to know such men. But there is a dif- 
ference. The best men in history and in our own 
time have been conspicuous for single virtues, and 
in others, while not deficient, not resplendent. 
They have had their weak sides, — aspects in which, 
while we could not censure, we could not admire 
them. They have had, too, their limitations of 
nation, condition, culture, sect, and age ; and have 
won the special reverence of only a part of the 
lovers of goodness. They have become obsolete 
with the lapse of time ; and while we recall with 
loving memory the saints of the earlier ages, we 
feel that somehow they are outgTOwn ; for we can 
see them only in their surroundings, and those 
surroundings so cleave to them as to obscure in 
some measure the lustre of their lives. There are 
not a few persons well worthy of their place on the 
list of all saints, whom we could not now propose 
as examples- to ourselves or others, without large 
exceptions and abatements. 

Christ alone takes nothing from his surround- 
ings. They show him ; but they do not veil him. 
He is in full activity, in close relation with the life 
of his time, and yet he does not become identified 
with it. He is no more a Hebrew than if he had 
been born in Arabia ; but kindred spirits of every 
people and tongue equally feel that he is their fel- 
low-citizen. The highest culture does not make 



134 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

him seem less, and none have been more ready 
than the wisest and the greatest among men to 
render to him the most lowly homage. He, alone 
of all luminaries in the spiritual firmament, has no 
secular parallax, but holds the same zenith altitude 
in our century of boastful science and progress too 
rapid to be registered as when the Galilean fisher- 
men were his satellites and friends. Nor do we 
get tired of his record, or find it exhausted by our 
life-long familiarity with it. On the other hand, 
he who has made it his daily companion for three 
or four score years reads it only with profounder 
interest, and is perpetually discovering in the char- 
acter which it portrays more delicate lines and 
richer tints of spiritual beauty and loveliness. 
Thus the narrative of this peerless life, alone of all 
biographies, is like the great works of nature, like 
the flowers, and the stars, and the glowing sunsets, 
and the sparkling waters, which we cannot behold 
with satiety, but which grow upon us with our 
years, and are the more full of sweetness and of 
glory for us the longer we live. 

In fine, we have in J esus Divine humanity, God 
manifest in the flesh, God in Christ, all of God 
that can be incarnate, all of God that we can fully 
comprehend. We employ with reference to the 
Divine attributes the two terms infinite and perfect, 
— the former as applied to God's power and know- 



GOD IN CHRIST. 



135 



ledge, the latter to his moral attributes. Infinity 
cannot be duplicated. It can be incarnate only in 
part. Christ could not be omnipotent, — else there 
were two Gods ; and he expressly says, 44 1 can of 
mine own self do nothing." He could not be om- 
niscient, — else there were two Gods ; and you re- 
member that he disclaims the knowledge even of 
the time when his own predictions would be ful- 
filled, and there can be no doubt that, like any 
other son of man, he grew in wisdom, as the evan- 
gelist says, and that there still remained room for 
further growth. But moral perfection can be fully 
incarnate. It may be duplicated, multiplied. It 
is conceivable that a being not infinite may be per- 
fect, — may be endowed with immaculate purity 
and holiness, with justice or righteousness incapa- 
ble of the slightest deflection from the absolute and 
everlasting right, and with a love embracing all be- 
ings, and ready to do or to suffer to the utmost for 
all whom it can thus benefit, — to coin its entire 
selfhood into service and sacrifice. This concep- 
tion is realized in Christ, and in him alone. 

But it must be distinctly understood that Christ 
could not represent God to man, except as a man. 
There used to be a great deal of controversy about 
what was called the rank of Christ, springing from 
the vulgar notion that birth, place, and title are 
greater than goodness, and can make divineness 



136 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

more divine. Now if Christ was so raised above 
human trials and temptations that he could not feel 
them, so that his goodness was merely automatic, 
he does not represent God. We cannot think of 
God as controlled by a necessity beyond his own 
choice, but only as freely willing, and willing with 
all the intensity of his infinite being that which is 
holy, just, and good ; and were we to believe the 
right to be of a necessity outside of his own being, 
and not of his own choice and will, while we might 
fear him, we should no longer adore him. Christ 
is perfect and divine, not because he could not, but 
because he would not, sin. He might have spurned, 
but he always welcomed, the incomings of the Di- 
vine Spirit, and therefore it was that the Spirit 
took up its abode in him, and he became one with 
God. The narrative of the temptation, doubtless 
his own symbolical sketch of his own experience, 
denotes an actual measuring of strength with the 
powers of evil, and their entire defeat and subju- 
gation. Then as to pain, privation, and grief, his 
whole demeanor is not that of one whom none of 
these things move, but of one who feels them as we 
feel them, yet who will not succumb to them, or 
falter on the line of duty, or incur one pang the 
less if thereby one iota of his work is to remain 
unfinished. 

Christ, while he represents the God whose na- 



GOD IN CHBIST. 



137 



ture is ineffably pure, righteous, and loving, in 
no sense so conspicuously bears the image of God, 
and so closely meets man's need as a creature of 
God who would fain know that he is his child, as in 
suffering and dying. Love has no language so in- 
tense, so penetrating, as that of sacrifice, and God 
speaks to man in the language of sacrifice in the 
suffering, dying Christ. He was in Christ on the 
cross, and it is his voice that ever resounds from 
Calvary, " Look unto me, and be ye saved, all ye 
ends of the earth." It is in Christ that the Divine 
Shepherd makes search in forest and on mountain 
to bring back the lost sheep to the fold. It is in 
Christ that the Father goes forth to meet his peni- 
tent son, and makes the whole house ring with joy 
on his return. 

Let us look for a moment at this parable of the 
lost son as illustrating the thoroughly Christlike 
view which Christ always gives of his and our 
Father, God. The father in the parable does not 
ask whether it is right to forgive, whether justice 
must not somehow be satisfied, whether, if he takes 
the younger son home, he ought not to inflict the due 
penalty on the elder son, who has never at any 
time transgressed his commandments. He evi- 
dently regards forgiveness as simply the repentant 
sinner's due, even as St. John, who most of all the 
disciples had an inside knowledge of divine things, 



138 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

wrote, " If we confess our sins, God is faithful and 
just to forgive us our sins." Still stronger, if pos- 
sible, is the other parable of the one lost sheep 
which the Divine Shepherd, that is, the Eternal 
Father, ceases not to follow with his loving quest 
till he is brought home to the fold. Now if Christ 
had uttered these parables about himself, they 
would certainly have been true of him, living and 
dying. He whelmed with his forgiving love the 
penitent who wept at his feet. He gave his life 
for his flock. In the free, unpurchased mercy of 
his self-sacrificing life and his precious blood-shed- 
ding, he says, " In me behold your God and Father. 
See how he loves. Know that the penitent ever 
finds refuge in his house and his everlasting arms. 
Believe that in the fullness of time the last stray- 
ling from his fatherly love shall be brought home." 

The God in Christ, then, is not the stern law- 
giver, the relentless judge, the pitiless autocrat, 
unmoved by the needs and griefs of humanity. 
He feels for man. The infinite soul throbs for him 
with profound emotion, with ineffable pity for his 
misdoing and ill-being, with a fuller pulse of glad- 
ness than can flow in any finite soul when the lost 
son is found, when he who was dead in sin is made 
alive again. 

The incarnation is the atonement, — the at-one- 
ment, not the reconciling of God to man, but God 



GOB IN CHRIST. 



139 



in Christ reconciling man unto himself. Christ in 
his divineness is perfect humanity. He shows man 
what he may progressively become, —how he too 
may be a partaker of the divine nature. He man- 
ifests in his own person the possibilities of human 
nature. He takes up, as it were, collective human- 
ity into his own bosom, and pours upon its bruised 
and sin-stricken body the healing balsam of God's 
forgiving and strengthening spirit. God, in dwell- 
ing in Christ, dwells in man, and becomes incar- 
nate, in the measure of their several receptivities, 
in all the souls that are born anew, the progeny of 
the second Adam. This is what Christ means 
when he says, " The glory which thou hast given 
me I have given them, that they may be one even 
as we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they 
may be made perfect in one." 

In this atoning ministry Christ verifies his own 
words, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Fa- 
ther," and had he not for so many centuries been 
placed by the popular theology in contrast, and 
even in antagonism to the Father, I think that 
every reader of the sacred record would feel that 
they were one. Were Jesus, precisely as the evan- 
gelists describe him, walking among us as he walked 
in Judsea, should we not own his as a fatherly 
presence ? Should we not be willing to trust his 
care and love for eternity ? Should we not come 



140 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

to him with our needs and our griefs for counsel 
and comfort, and bring our children for his bless- 
ing, and welcome him to our tables? Even under 
the consciousness of sin, I am sure that, were we 
penitent, we should resort to him as readily as the 
little child after a fit of waywardness buries him- 
self in his mother's embrace, and can conceive of 
peace nowhere else. Do you not see how the really 
needy people, the suffering, afflicted, bereaved, for- 
saken, despised, regarded him as the divine father- 
hood incarnate, pressing through the crowd to 
touch the hem of his garment, letting down the 
paralytic through the broken roof that the Lord's 
hand may be laid upon him, missing his presence 
more than all things else when death enters the 
house, while he blends his tears with theirs, bears 
their griefs as his own, makes his cross the altar of 
mercy, alike for kindred and strangers, for mourn- 
ing friends and misguided enemies ? In all this it 
is God in Christ, the Father in the Son, and we 
begin to know God only when he is to us, if I may 
so speak, an infinite, omnipresent, omniscient, al- 
mighty Christ. Take precisely the traits of char- 
acter which you behold in Christ, and which you 
recognize in him as absolutely perfect, and be per- 
suaded that it is in those very traits that God pre- 
sents himself for your trust, reverence, love, and 
that he sent Jesus into this world to show you and 



GOD IN CHRIST. 



141 



all men what manner of being it is that sits on the 
throne of the universe. 

Do you ask how it is that God and Christ have 
to so large an extent been regarded as at oppo- 
site poles of the spiritual universe, — the Father as 
the impersonation of inflexible justice and almost 
implacable wrath, and Christ as interposing to sat- 
isfy God's justice and appease his wrath ? I think 
that it is in great part due to the habit, in the 
earlier, yet not the earliest Christian time, of look- 
ing at the Old Testament as not only holy scrip- 
tures and records of revelation (which I believe it 
to be), but also as of equal authority with the Gos- 
pels, and not as presenting a rudimentary and im- 
perfect theology which was superseded by God in 
Christ. The Old Testament contains such notions 
of God as were inevitable, before the Word became 
flesh and men beheld the genuine glory of God, 
" full of grace and truth." The habit of Protest- 
ant theologians, in Great Britain and America at 
least, has been to derive their ideas of God from 
the most gloomy and terrific representations of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, and while they called him Fa- 
ther, to divest him of all fatherly attributes, ascrib- 
ing to Christ alone the character in which he always 
professes to speak the words and to do the works 
of the Father. 

My objection to the dogma of the Trinity, as it 



142 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

has been generally held, is not that it makes too 
much of Christ ; for he is to me divine, and I 
know not what can be more than divine ; but that 
it makes the Father and the Son two instead of 
one. However, in New England at least, this type 
of theology is fast disappearing ; the old technical 
terms are interpreted with an entirely new mean- 
ing ; the incarnation is becoming the central belief 
among enlightened Christians, and I cannot but 
trust that it will be so recognized that all who own 
it will deem themselves of one mind and one heart 
as disciples of Christ. The incarnation — God in 
Christ — hence our knowledge of God ; hence, too, 
our knowledge of our own nature in its capacities 
and its destiny ; hence the reconciling power and 
love which shall yet draw all men heavenward; 
hence the assurance of forgiveness to the penitent, 
of union with God for all who love and serve him, 
of eternal life with him whose words are, "Because 
I live, ye shall live also." 

My friends, on our life way be God in Christ our 
pattern and our goal. As we take Christ into our 
hearts and reproduce him in our lives, let us never 
forget that we are thus " followers of God as dear 
children," and may we realize on earth the begin- 
nings and growth of that oneness with Christ and 
God which shall be complete and eternal in heaven. 



SERMON XII 



KEHEMAH. 
" I consulted -with myself. 7 ' — Neh, v. 7. 

" I consulted with myself/'— the best counselor 
that he could have had this side of heaven. 

Between Moses and Christ, Nehemiah is by far 
the greatest personage in Hebrew history. He 
has gained favor with Artaxerxes as his cup-bearer ; 
but amidst the luxury of an oriental court still 
mourning for the desolation, and praying for the 
peace, of Jerusalem, he asks and obtains leave to 
rebuild the walls and gates of the holy city. Be- 
fore opening his mission to the depressed remnant 
of his nation, he surveys the work in the secrecy of 
three successive nights, and then so apportions it 
among the people that each of the principal men 
shall take charge of the repairs over against his 
own premises, so as to contribute to his safety, 
comfort, pleasure, and wealth by having a well-built 
wall instead of ruins and rubbish about his grounds 
and beneath his windows. Under Xehemiah's su- 
pervision the walls rise like those of Thebes to the 
strains of Amphion's lyre, so that while his bitter 



144 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



enemies, the Samaritan magistrates, are laying 
their plans to prevent the commencement of his 
undertaking, they learn to their dismay that the 
work is done. 

But he finds internal grievances and abuses that 
present still greater difficulties. The few rich men 
have oppressed the poor, have exacted usury from 
them against the law, and have got possession of 
their property by modes that will not bear investi- 
gation. Instead of temporizing and compromising 
Nehemiah convenes the earliest indignation meet- 
ing of which we have record. He " sets a great as- 
sembly against " the extortioners, and the majesty 
of public opinion constrains them to disgorge their 
plunder. He is threatened, meanwhile, with assassi- 
nation, and is urged to shut himself up in the tem- 
ple ; but he says indignantly : " Should such a 
man as I flee ? Or who is there that, being as I 
am, would go into the temple to save his life ? I 
will not go in." 

He finds the Sabbath shamelessly desecrated. 
The people of the surrounding country have got 
into the habit of bringing in wine, grapes, and figs 
for sale on the Sabbath, and there are men of Tyre 
that "bring in fish and all manner of ware." 
Nehemiah quietly orders the gates to be shut at 
eventide before the Sabbath, and not to be opened 
till the holy time has passed. The hucksters lodge 



NEEEMIAH, 



145 



outside of the gates once or twice, and then being 
informed that if they come again they will be appre- 
hended and suitably dealt with, they come no more. 

Not only the common people, but some of the 
priests have contracted marriages with idolaters 
and aliens, and thus have been drawn into associa- 
tions sure to pervert their religious faith, and to 
make their children, if not themselves, worshipers 
of the vile and sanguinary divinities of the Ca- 
naanitish races. " And their children spake half 
in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in 
the Jews' language." Nehemiah arrests the far- 
ther progress of this evil, and deposes the priests 
and Levites involved in it, among them the son 
and expectant successor of the high priest, who is 
the son-in-law of his most resolute and powerful 
Samaritan antagonist. 

These and other reforms he effects with amazing 
celerity, and enlists the great mass of the people in 
favor of them, not by intrigue, but by the most 
open, direct, decisive modes of action. The entire 
political history of mankind hardly presents another 
instance of so much accomplished in so short a 
time by the plastic energy of one man, exerted, not 
on passive, but on discordant and stubborn ma- 
terials. 

My text gives, as I think, the secret of his mar- 
velous success, — of the thoroughness and faithful- 



146 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

ness of his work. " I consulted with myself," with 
no one else. Mark, — the narrative does not ex- 
clude, but throughout implies his seeking wisdom 
from on high. He is devoutly mindful of the 
Divine presence, and at every stage of his work 
implores the Divine blessing ; and he could not 
have truly consulted with himself, had he not 
borne it sacredly in mind that his selfhood was 
God's of right, and that man without God is less 
or other than his own proper self. Indeed, it is in 
accordance with the sound philosophy of human 
nature that the prodigal in our Lord's parable, as 
soon as he comes to himself, says, " I will arise and 
go to my father." Had he not said this in his 
heart, he would not have come to himself. 

But to what purpose is this old Hebrew story for 
us who have no walls to build, or public wrongs to 
right, or cities to govern? I answer that we all 
have a life-work as truly ours as the restoration of 
Jerusalem was his, and that we can be sure of do- 
ing that work wisely and faithfully only by con- 
sulting with ourselves at every stage of it. There 
never was a time when this example was needed as 
it is now. It is matter of frequent observation 
that the modern facilities of intercourse are extin- 
guishing eccentricities, moulding communities, men, 
and women into a degree of similitude not dreamed 
of half a century ago, and producing an approxi- 



NEHEMIAH. 147 

mate uniformity of manners and fashions, of modes 
of speech and conduct, and at many points of 
opinion also. Early in this century you could 
find in a single little town more odd, strange, un- 
classed persons than now exist in one of our most 
populous counties. To a certain extent this is to 
be rejoiced in. It is well to have the number of 
persons who cannot bear their fit and full part in 
the life and interests of society diminished. But, 
at the same time, is there not a crushing out of 
individuality ? Are men's souls their own as fully 
as they used to be ? Are there not fewer than 
formerly who consult with themselves ? Has not 
conformity with established rule or average cus- 
tom passed from graceful, measured, and contin- 
gent compliance into absolute submission to so- 
cial tyranny ? To take a single specification, is 
not comfort, and consequently health, often know- 
ingly sacrificed to fashion ? If there be a fashion, 
in itself unnatural and ungraceful, that has high 
authority in its favor, are there not multitudes who 
adopt it, though it be nothing less than chronic 
torture, and though it be a well-known cause of 
multiplying the number of those who lack strength 
for the duties, though not for the vanities of life ? 
Then there are very many persons of limited in- 
comes who feel compelled to live in the style of 
persons of their own standing and of twice their 



148 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

income, and who sacrifice to this imagined necessity 
much that is really essential to their domestic well- 
being, keep themselves always poor, doom their 
families to a heritage of want and dependence, and 
often defraud their creditors of their rightful dues. 
Practices on the outside borders of morality are 
adopted under like influence by many who disap- 
prove of them. There is in many houses a much 
freer use of strong drink than the consciences of 
the householders regard as right and safe ; and 
while I am thankful that gambling has not yet be- 
come fashionable in general society, there are quar- 
ters, and classes of persons, especially of young men, 
in which some at least gamble with a clear con- 
sciousness of wrong-doing, because they dare not to 
refuse. As regards outward religious observances, 
many, I am inclined to think, ask, not, What is fit- 
ting ? What is right ? but simply, What is, or is 
becoming, the prevailing custom ? and were there a 
disposition on the part of leaders in various circles 
of society to do with Sunday what has been done 
with so many once holy days, to make it a holiday 
and nothing else, the fashion would be followed by 
thousands who would think it very wrong. 

The extent and the suppleness of this social con- 
formity show that it cannot be a mere external phe- 
nomenon. They indicate souls that do not take 
counsel of themselves, — souls that do not belong 



NEHEMIAH. 



149 



to the men and women who profess to own them, — 
souls that are nothing better than public property. 
On those who have formed, or are tending toward, 
this parasitic way of living, on those who borrow 
consciences of their neighbors, and still more em- 
phatically on those who have characters yet to form, 
I would urge the illustrious example of my text, 
and would earnestly beg them always to consult 
with themselves. 

Consult with yourself, my friend. No other hu- 
man being can know precisely what your duty is. 
We know, negatively, that you ought not to violate 
the fundamental laws of purity, integrity, and truth, 
aud positively, that you are bound, in general, to 
be placable, kind, and helpful. But there are de- 
tails of your duty which we cannot know. I may 
be your most intimate friend, and, in the common 
phrase, may know all about you. Yet, even in 
what is called your outward life, there is more that 
I do not know than there is that I know. There 
are claims upon you of which you make no show. 
There are peculiarities in your relations to kindred 
and friends, to those dependent upon you, to those 
on whom you depend, which you feel, but cannot 
well explain. There are expectations of you, just 
or unjust, which you know as I cannot. I may be 
wiser than you, and were I in your place, I might 
fill it better than you can ; but not being in your 



150 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

place, I cannot fill it so well as you can ; and if 
you take my advice instead of consulting with your- 
self, you will be unwise, and may be led to act un- 
wisely. 

Still more, you have traits of mind and soul, of 
which you ought to be conscious, but of which no 
one else can be fully cognizant. You may have 
proclivities or liabilities in some dangerous direc- 
tion, which render what would be innocent for oth- 
ers harmful for you. You may need safeguards 
which others do not need. Your soul may thrive 
on nourishment which for your neighbor has more 
bran than wheat. As surely as your constitution 
of mind, native or inherited, differs from that of 
those around you, so surely do you need for re- 
straint, guidance, and growth, a moral and reli- 
gious self-discipline in some respects different from 
theirs. You have a soul, your own by God's gift, 
which you are bound to keep intact from evil, and 
to nourish in all that is Christlike and Godlike. 
To this end self-knowledge alone can furnish in 
full the appropriate means. To be sure, there are 
some essential means, such as prayer and self-com- 
munion, as to which there can be no question. But 
the ordering of the details of your life, both out- 
ward and inward, so that you shall always seek and 
pursue what is good for your soul, and shun what 
is harmful for your inward well-being, even though 



NEHEMIAH, 



151 



for others it be harmless, is your charge, and no 
counsel but your own can be safely followed. 

Consult with yourselves, but with your whole 
selves. You, my friend, do not contain your entire 
selfhood in what you call your own person. The 
apostle announces no new Christian principle, but 
a fundamental law of nature, when he says, " We 
are members one of another." There are lives, 
souls, bound most intimately with yours, — so truly 
a part of your being that you would lead a maimed 
life were they taken from you. There is a smaller, 
a larger circle, which your example, character, in- 
fluence permeates, how far you may not know, but 
can hardly err by an overestimate. There are 
those to whom you have from God a mission of 
love and charity. There are public interests, in 
which your part is your imperative duty. Consult, 
then, with yourself in such a way that you may do 
for others, for the few, the many, the city, the state, 
the nation, all the good within your power, so that 
to the full measure of your ability you may make 
the world the happier and the better for your liv- 
ing in it. 

Beware of selfishness, and I speak not here of 
the vulgar selfishness which is synonymous with 
greed, but of that refined selfishness which pur- 
sues its own course, makes a law of its own whim, 
caprice, or waywardness, without reference to its 



152 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



effect on others, — which has no tenderness for 
feeble consciences, no scruple in doing what will 
betray weaker souls into peril or wrong. For the 
pulsation of your selfhood through every filament 
that binds you to any other human soul, you are 
responsible. So consult with yourself, then, that 
no souls can bear witness to God against you. 

Consult with yourself, but with your immortal 
self. Were your being earth-limited, vice would 
still be inexpedient, and so would be arduous vir- 
tue, self-denial, earnest moral effort. You would 
want to get through life with the minimum of fric- 
tion against obstacles of every kind. You would 
walk the race instead of running it, and would care 
chiefly for refreshment by the way, there being no 
goal at the end. But as an immortal being, you 
will want to cherish that within you which is not 
going to die. You will want to enter the higher 
life, fit for its society, in sympathy with its work 
and its joy, and in a condition in which you are 
willing to show your soul to God and to your fel- 
low-men, unclothed and open to all eyes, as it must 
be when the tabernacle that now veils it from sight 
shall be trampled down in the dust of the grave. 

Finally, consult with yourself as a child of God, 
bearing his image, which you are bound to cleanse 
from whatever earthly stain it has incurred, and to 
keep clean and pure, as ever in his sight. The 



NEHEMIAH. 



153 



nobly born of an earthly father is doubly guilty 
and worthy of double condemnation, if he disgraces 
his birth and scorns his sonship. How much more 
should this be true of you and me, if, God-born, 
we befoul the birth-tokens which we cannot wholly 
efface, or if we merely hide them from sight by 
worldliness and levity ! Bearing our divine son- 
ship in perpetual mind, let our constant self -exhor- 
tation be, in the words of the great apostle, " Be 
ye therefore followers of God as dear children." 



SERMON XIII. 



CASTLE-BUILDING. 
" Let every man take heed how he buildeth." — 1 Con. iii. 10. 

My subject is castle-building, a matter of small 
concern, some practical hearer may say to himself, 
— mere vague, transient romance of thought, as 
seems to be suggested by its French name, cha- 
teaux en Espagne, castles in Spain, which, when 
the Pyrenees were an almost insurmountable bar- 
rier, seemed to the prosaic French mind a region 
of fable, a dream-land. Our tendency is to attach 
more importance to what one does than to what 
he thinks or imagines, and this is, for the most 
part, right in our estimate of others ; for we cannot 
look into their chambers of imagery. But for our- 
selves, conduct is not an absolutely certain standard 
of character. Conduct is the joint product of 
character and circumstance, and circumstance may 
be often, long, or always the more influential factor 
of the two. Then, also, " the things that are seen 
are temporal," and conduct, though it may have 
momentous influence, spends itself and ultimately 
leaves no vestige, while the " house not made with 



CASTLE-B UILDING. 



155 



hands " which we build in the inner man may be 
" eternal in the heavens," or may be such as the 
first breath of heaven will dissolve into empty air 
and leave us houseless. In general, too, it is char- 
acter that determines conduct ; and even if at the 
outset, or sometimes, weaker, in the issue and in 
the long run it is almost always stronger than cir- 
cumstance. 

We worthily congratulate ourselves on our moral 
freedom ; yet is not this, for not a few of us, a past 
rather than a present endowment ? We were all 
free; but are we all free now? I can imagine 
here to-day (though I should be sorry to know that 
there is such a person present) a man so entirely 
the slave of some vile lust or appetite that I might 
place before him in the most vivid word-painting 
the utter foulness and shamefulness of his cherished 
vice, with the certain ruin of estate, body, and soul 
impending over him, that I might add all the hor- 
rors that the severest and most realistic school of 
theology would annex to such a doom, and that he 
might believe every word that I said, yet before 
my voice had died upon his ear, were the oppor- 
tunity offered, he would show how truly he was the 
bond-slave of sin. On the other hand, I trust that 
there are many who hear me, whom not the most 
intense temptation, not the fabled ring of Gyges 
which made its wearer invisible in his evil-doing, 



156 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



not the absolute certainty of concealment from all 
men, and even from the Divine eye, could render 
guilty of flagitious crime, of flagrant dishonesty, of 
vindictive malice. Yet that profligate could have 
been a saint, and you, my friend, on whose purity 
and integrity no stain or shadow has ever rested, 
might have been a fit object of scorn and loathing. 
There was a time when Nero might have been as 
good a man in his life as Seneca was in his writings. 
There was a time when St. John might have devel- 
oped into a J udas. 

In speaking thus, I am not unmindful of the 
power of heredity ; but that it is a power success- 
fully rebelled against and overcome is shown by 
the instances, by no means rare, in which sons are 
scourged into virtuous lives by shame for a father's 
vices, or driven into vice by the harsh and unlovely 
aspect of a father's virtues, often bequeathing in 
full to their own children the legacy which they 
had suffered to lapse over one generation. Nor do 
I forget the possibility of a late change of charac- 
ter. Men of the worst type have been reformed 
often enough to show that long-suspended anima- 
tion in a human soul is not necessarily death, and 
thoroughly good men cease to be good often enough 
to give the faintest gleam of possibility to the old 
story of the fall of the angels. But practically, 
and in the great majority of cases, freedom of 



CASTLE-B UILDING, 



157 



choice and action, at no late period on the part 
of those who yield to evil propensities, issues in a 
conditioD which deserves no better name than ab- 
ject slavery ; while, on the other side, it rises into 
a freedom within and never beyond the broad and 
ever broadening range of all things noble, excellent, 
and godlike.. 

In point of fact we act most efficiently when we 
least seem to act. We will the most imperatively 
when we are entirely unconscious of willing. We 
shape character and conduct when we think that 
we are doing nothing at all. What we call our 
idle hours are our most busy hours. What we 
consider as mere dreams have more reality in them 
than our whole lives beside. Moreover, our young 
days, because they are fullest of these day-dreams, 
get so strong a hold upon the coming years that we 
can never shake off their influence, and can escape 
their absolute control only by what seems a life- 
and-death struggle. It is then that we build. We 
afterward live in what we have built, and while we 
live in it, it is hard to alter it, and especially diffi- 
cult, beyond all save exceptional enterprise, to re- 
move its underpinning and to put a new foundation 
beneath. 

We may in our youth build as we please, or 
build at haphazard. We may construct a fabric 
after the pattern which God will show us if we 



158 RING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

commune with him, or we may choose our architect 
among desires or proclivities whether earthly, sen- 
sual, or devilish. We may be groveling or am- 
bitious in our plans. We may build a structure 
that shall have nothing above the ground-floor, and 
a large part underground ; or we may erect an edi- 
fice that, like a Grecian temple, shall be grand, but 
wholly terrestrial ; or we may rear a roofless castle 
with heaven-aspiring walls and turrets, that shall 
wait for its topstone till time is merged in eter- 
nity. 

But, as I have said, youth is the building time. 
It is then that the spirits come and go at our bid- 
ding, and they crave employment. Resolutely 
spurned, they cease to be importunate ; made wel- 
come, they put all that is in them into their work, 
and leave traces of their handicraft in every part 
of the building. 

I think that those of you who have passed beyond 
early youth will confirm me in my statement that 
character grows more than from all else from what 
are called the idle moments, the listless, dreamy 
seasons, the reveries of boyhood and girlhood. 
You then shaped the ideals which you are now 
realizing. Low tastes and pleasures have their 
rehearsal in thought and fancy, it may be feared, 
long before the restraints of home-life and parental 
guardianship leave room for their indulgence. 



CASTLE-B UILDING. 



159 



Those who have made to themselves gods of gold 
carved or cast the models of them before they 
had the handling of any save the baser metals. 
The daring adventurers were in perils oft, while 
still under careful watch and ward. The enthusi- 
astic lovers and cultivators of literature and science 
touched their goal in clear vision before they 
started on the race. As for those who seek an in- 
corruptible crown in the service of God and man, 
though in this most arduous of pursuits there may 
have been intermission and sometimes even retro- 
gression, the aim, the purpose, the very form and 
image of high spiritual excellence was familiar to 
their early years, and has never ceased to restrain, 
direct, and guide them. 

To put what I have said into different yet equiv- 
alent form, hope gives shape to character. We 
mean to be, we strive to be what we hope to be. 
We already are, in a preponderant measure, what 
we hope to be. Our lifeway inevitably takes the 
trend of our hopes ; and hope underlies our day- 
dreams, builds our air-castles, is brooded on in our 
quiet, lonely hours, and often makes quiet and 
seeks solitude that it may be brooded upon, and 
realized in prophetic fancy, which often has more 
of reality than there is in its objects when fully 
attained. 

In all that I have said I have been preparing to 



160 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



lay strong emphasis on the proposition which I 
have already intimated, namely, that our castle- 
building, our day-dreams, constitute the chief field 
for the exercise of the will-power. Had the old pro- 
phet been an adept in mental philosophy, he could 
not have uttered a precept more thoroughly based on 
the immutable laws of human nature than when he 
said, " Consider your ways." It is the one thing 
which we can do. Our freedom lies chiefly in our 
capacity of attention, of continuous thought, of 
thought into which enters the element of approval 
or repudiation, of love or of abhorrence. I know 
that in my youth I could call up certain unworthy 
objects of desire, pursuit, or endeavor in such rela- 
tions to my spiritual nature, in such bearing on my 
permanent well-being, as to make me loathe them ; 
and when those objects were without my agency 
forced upon my momentary thought, I am sure 
that I then had sufficient will-power to drive them 
out, to shut them out, to keep them out. Or I 
could bid them stay, enjoy them for a time, saying 
to myself that I could never be induced to give 
them anything more than heart-room ; and thus 
harbored, they would have been sure to return, and 
I should have made them welcome, and invited 
their frequent recurrence, and thrust out other 
thoughts that I might entertain them. I know 
that I had equally a double course open to me, and 



CASTLE-B UILDING. 



161 



entirely at the arbitrament of my own will, as to 
the noblest objects of spiritual ambition, pursuit, 
endeavor. I could say to myself, "These are 
graver subjects than befit the days crowned with 
spring-flowers, — they deserve thought, but they 
can wait, — they belong to the shady side of life." 
Or I could clear within me a place in which they 
could show themselves in their pure golden radi- 
ance, with their gems and jewels of amaranthine 
beauty, so that I should want to see them again 
and often, the more and the oftener because in my 
destitute youth I needed and craved raiment that I 
should never be ashamed of, and adornment that 
should grow richer and brighter as the years 
rolled on. 

Now in these day-dreams, in which thought and 
feeling are often more deeply concerned than in 
what seems the life-work, the will is intensely ac- 
tive. We are hardly aware that it is so, because we 
do not frame specific volitions a^ to individual acts. 
But we make collective volitions in which indivi- 
dual acts are as truly included as are the several 
members of a species in the name of the species. 
What you think that you willed yesterday or to- 
day is very probably one of a fascicle of volitions 
bound together by a definite purpose, which you 
really willed five, or ten, or twenty, or forty years 
ago. If there has been any yielding to an evil pro- 



162 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



pensity or impulse, more probably than not the sur- 
render took place at some period which you cannot 
distinctly recall, when you virtually said, and have 
never retracted it, to some alluring form of wrong, 
" Be thou my good." Or if you have within the 
last few days performed some act of self-denial, 
wrought some arduous work of love, made some de- 
cisive onward and upward movement in the higher 
life, you willed it when, at the parting of the way, 
with the diverging life-routes as distinctly present 
to your thought as are the diverging streets of the 
city to the fleshly eye, you made choice of the path 
on which linger the sacred footprints of your Re- 
deemer. That volition, — it may not have been 
momentary ; it probably was shaping, nurturing, 
and strengthening itself through a series of day- 
dreams, which were truly heavenly visions, — that 
volition took in a life-time. Though it was in the 
simplest form, " I will obey God," 44 1 will follow 
Christ," 44 I will conform myself to the absolute 
right," — it was complex and multitudinous, and 
you have ever since been unrolling it, and taking 
out its contents one by one. 

From what has been said it appears that there is 
great risk in castle-building, — that it is not the 
idle, aimless waste of vacant hours, but a building 
of castles that we are going to live in, and that 
will immeasurably outlast our earthly habitations. 



CASTLE-B UILDING. 163 

What, then, is the advice to be given ? Not to 
build ? An advice more easily given than taken. 
Xo soul worth saving can help building. He who 
did no work of this kind would have a name to live 
rather than any real life of mind and spirit. The 
only fit counsel, and that, of vital, soul-saving im- 
portance, is in the words of our text, " Let every 
man (and be it added with intensest emphasis, let 
every child, let every youth) take heed how he 
buildeth." We have also in our context the first 
suggestion about the edifice, — ;i Other foundation 
(fit to be built upon) can no man lay than Jesus 
Christ : " for Jesus Christ is the Everlasting: Eight 
incarnate, and as such, has been consciously or un- 
consciously built upon by every good man since the 
world began ; but with his words as interpreted and 
illustrated by his life we have a corner-stone so 
squared, smoothed, and polished, as by its visible 
magnificence to prescribe like symmetry and beauty 
for whatever is built upon it, and to cast shame on 
whatever structure may show tokens of carelessness 
or meanness, of groveling tastes or paltry aims. 

There are many ways in which we may build on 
Jesus Christ. AVe may build upon him our faith, 
our hope, our human sympathies, our world-wide 
charity. But I am now speaking of him as the 
foundation for our castle-building, for our ideal of 
character, and of the earthly future which we hope 



164 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

to realize. As to this ideal, I believe that if, aside 
from what is commonly called theology, a large 
part of which is unmeaning verbiage, and the rest 
philosophy, a youth or a child could take the story 
of Christ in the Gospels, and read his words and 
his life as those of an actual being who was born 
and lived and died as a man among men, he could 
not fail to be so enamored with his spirit and char- 
acter as to make Christ-likeness the one dream and 
longing of his soul, thus to lay the beams and floor- 
ing of his castle on the Rock of Ages, and thence 
to shape the virtues and graces of that divine hu- 
manity into its columns and its buttresses. 

Build thus, my young friends. There are wake- 
ful night hours, hours of travel, times of inevitable 
listlessness, times when you are weary of work, yet 
the mind will not rest. In these you are building 
somehow, — you are imagining for yourselves a 
bright, happy, prosperous future. I would not 
have a sunbeam in this picture quenched or dimmed. 
No matter how bright aud closely clustered the sun- 
beams are. Build your castle of them, and if you 
do, you will find none so bright as those from the 
Sun of righteousness, and they will give to the 
structure its strength and permanence. Dream as 
your fancy prompts you of what you will attain, 
acquire, and do ; but above all, dream of what you 
will be, — of the heart-home of principle and char- 



CASTLE-B UILD1NG. 



165 



acter, in which you will do your life-work and har- 
vest its fruits. But do not roof your castle. Your 
ideal will grow as you grow. A more delicate 
tracery, a finer, richer beauty of holiness will be con- 
stantly looming before your fancy, to be built into 
your ideal, and thence embodied in your life. You 
may make mistakes or failures, which must be cor- 
rected or supplied in your ideal, that they may no 
longer disfigure the fair proportions of your life- 
structure. Nor should you regard your work as done 
so long as you can catch a glimpse of auy ray, or 
line, or tint of sweetness, loveliness, beauty, in your 
Saviour's character which you can make your own. 

But what is to be said to those who have built 
on other foundations, — who have formed and are 
realizing, perhaps thus far successfully, other ideals 
of character ? Hard as I have said it is, especially 
late in life, to put in a new foundation, it yet may 
be done, and were the difficulty of doing this seri- 
ously felt, it would be done oftener than it is. But 
it is too common a feeling that, though this ought 
to be done, it can be done at any time, no matter 
how late. There are life- structures which need 
not be demolished, and lack only a fitting founda- 
tion to ensure their completion in strength and 
beauty. There are, also, life-structures in which 
lust, passion, appetite, or greed has been the master- 
builder, and these, when they become scandalously 



166 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

offensive, one sometimes attempts to improve, but 
to no purpose. They do not admit of improve- 
ment. The materials are ail bad. Eeformation, 
re-formation, is what is needed, and it must begin 
with the foundation, in the profound feeling that 
other fitting foundation can no man lay than Jesus 
Christ. Happy they who have yet to build, if they 
will only hold in faithful memory the apostolic 
exhortation, " Let every man take heed how he 
buildeth." 



SERMON XIV. 



THREE PARABLES. 
" Without a parable spake he not unto them." — Matt. xiii. 34. 

The oriental way of saying, " Teaching by par- 
able was his usual method," and Jesus gives his 
reason for it, — " Because seeing, they see not, and 
hearing, they hear not, neither do they understand," 
that is, they are so light-minded and so little accus- 
tomed to spiritual themes of thought, that formal, 
abstract statements of truth and duty could not 
penetrate to their hearts and souls ; while they can 
remember a story, a parable or fable, and as they 
turn it over in their minds, they may attain to some 
part of its meaning, and derive some instruction 
and salutary influence from it. These parables are 
indeed full fraught with the divinest wisdom. They 
contain layer upon layer of meaning, and while a 
child can understand them, with our maturest 
knowledge and experience we grow into, but never 
beyond, their deeper significance. 

There are three of these parables given by St. 
Matthew in succession, which manifestly belong 
together, and have a peculiar worth as together 



168 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

comprising the sum of human duty, and giving a 
comprehensive chart of the way to heaven, namely, 
the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, that of 
the talents, and that of the arraigning of the whole 
race of man before the judgment-seat. They are 
all the more interesting and momentous, when we 
consider the time of their utterance. It was the 
Wednesday of Passion-week. Our Lord stood on 
the Mount of Olives, with his disciples and pro- 
bably a multitude beside ; and these parables are 
the close and the fit consummation of his public 
ministry. All that remained for him was to affix 
equally by his death and by his resurrection the 
eternal seal of the living God upon his gospel. 
Each of these parables might well claim a series of 
sermons ; yet I think that it may not be without 
profit for us to consider them together. 

We have, first, the parable of the wise and fool- 
ish virgins, — those who had their torches ready 
for lighting at the unforeseen moment when the 
bridal procession should draw near, and those who 
had no oil, and before they could get any, the pro- 
cession passed in to the wedding banquet, and they 
were shut out in the dark. The lesson of this par- 
able is constant preparation for the unforeseen, than 
which human life has nothing more certain, or so 
momentous in its bearing on character, and espe- 
cially preparation for death ; certain, but almost 



THREE PARABLES. 



169 



always unforeseen, and to be fitly met only with 
torches well trimmed and well fed. In this we 
have Christ's example in his own death, which he, 
indeed, foresaw as to the time, but could not have 
fully foreseen as to the unutterable horrors of those 
hours of anguish and torment on the cross in which 
imagination must have fallen immeasurably behind 
experience. Preparation with him preceded triaL 
He triumphed on Calvary because he had con- 
quered in Gethsemane. VTe need this lesson ; for 
our strongest temptations are those that are flashed 
upon us when vre feel safe and self-sufficient, — our 
heaviest afflictions are those which fall upon us 
like a thunderbolt from a clear sky ; and it is solely 
by such preparation as shall strip sin of its allure- 
ments and despoil sorrow of its despair and its bit- 
terness, that w r e can hold fast our integrity and 
purity, and maintain our serene submission and 
trust. 

For death, who is there that does not feel the 
need of being prepared, and that does not mean to 
prepare himself when the shadow shall begin to 
darken his life-way ? But death often casts no 
shadow before, and often the shadow steals on the 
light by such insensible degrees that it is hardly 
recognized till the moment of total eclipse. But, 
my friend, did you know for a certainty that death 
was close at hand, that you would not see in this 



170 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

world the beginning of another year, how would 
you live for your few remaining days on earth ? I 
think that you would all of you have a ready an- 
swer. Live so, then, to-day, to-morrow, every day ; 
for you need to be always prepared for the inevita- 
ble, yet unforeseen. 

But the best answer which can be given to this 
question is embodied in the parable of the talents, 
— a parable, by the way, to which we are indebted 
for the word talent in the sense of capacity or en- 
dowment. A master, who is going to be long 
absent, gives his servants different sums of money, 
talents, that is, large sums, all of them ; for even 
the one talent would have seemed great wealth 
to Jewish peasants, or to the Galilean fishermen 
who had come up to the feast and many of whom 
were accustomed to listen lovingly to Christ. This 
money they were to put to profitable use, so that it 
should be constantly growing, and ready to be 
shown in their several accounts with compound in- 
terest on their master's return. The servants that 
have used their money have doubled it, and they 
receive rich praise and great reward ; the one who 
has merely let his talent lie idle has it taken from 
him, and is put to open shame and grief. Just so 
is it in life. The talents, be they few or man}-, 
unused, are wasted and lost ; those kept in con- 
stant use are as constantly growing. Among the 



THREE PARABLES. 



Ill 



(so-called) harmless, but utterly useless persons to 
be found in all classes of society there are not a 
few who were capable of the best. There are those 
who were brilliant once, who from sheer idleness 
have sunk into a faded boyhood or girlhood, no 
longer young, but too frivolous to grow decently old, 
clinging convulsively to the skirts of the society 
which they once adorned, but which now spares no 
effort to cast them off. 

On the other hand, history and life are rich in 
examples of not only the five talents, and the two, 
but even the one made ten. It is so in literature 
and art. The chief difference between taste and 
genius is that mere taste discerns and approves 
what is excellent, while genius is the intensity of 
will-power to achieve and realize what taste is com- 
tent with admiring. One of the greatest of literary 
curiosities is an article in the Quarterly Eeview that 
criticised with unsparing and contemptuous ridicule 
Tennyson's first volume of verse, which though all 
of it in rhyme, certainly did not deserve to be 
called poetry. But from groveling at the foot of 
Parnassus, by faithful industry he has climbed to 
its summit. There are preserved in the Ambrosian 
Library at Milan the early studies in drawing of 
Leonardo da Vinci and of several other great ar- 
tists of his age, — sketches of as little promise as 
you might see in the work of raw beginners in the 



172 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

drawing-classes of our public schools, showing that 
the men whom all the world admires did not spring 
into fame, but reached it by patient endeavor 
through failure and shortcoming. 

The same law applies preeminently to the spir- 
itual life, and to those traits of character which fit 
and empower the Christian soul for commanding 
influence and extended and enduring usefulness. 
Many of those whose holiness has made them, not 
only good, but great, illustrious, in some instances 
absolutely world-renowned, have been persons of 
slender native ability, but have been nurtured and 
made strong, in mind no less than in heart, by the 
incessant and faithful culture of those faculties 
which ally the soul to God, — of that love which is 
far greater than intellect, becomes more and more 
in this world a cognitive power, and in a higher 
state of being will supersede the slow processes of 
reasoning, and make intuition of the divine the 
supreme source of knowledge. Dr. Tuckerman, 
the pioneer missionary to the heathen within sound 
of Sabbath-bells, was, as a very young man, though 
excellently good, of such unattractive dullness and 
of ability reputedly so feeble, that his society was 
shunned rather than sought by his brethren in the 
ministry, and he was regarded as fortunate beyond 
hope in securing a settlement in the poorest and 
most obscure parish within easy reach of Boston. 



THREE PARABLES. 



173 



Not many years elapsed before his parsonage and 
his little church in Rumney Marsh had become 
a Mecca for saintly pilgrimage, and when he re- 
turned to his native city as a minister to the poor, 
and was in familiar association with Dr. Channing, 
there were in their circle of intimate friends those 
who were in doubt which of the two was the greater 
man. I well remember, when he was my guest and 
occupied my pulpit, how I felt in my home, as did 
all who saw and heard him, as if it were an angel 
from heaven that was with us. 

The late Earl of Shaftesbury had by nature but 
the one talent, and hardly that. He derived the 
articles of his religious belief, no less than his Chris- 
tian faith and character, from a servant in his 
father's family, and his mind never broadened in 
the least beyond her very narrow creed, indeed, he 
never dared to think or look beyond it ; while 
on all subjects not within the range of his philan- 
thropy he never changed, and especially never en- 
larged, his first views or impressions. But he was 
drinking in his Divine Master's spirit in full and 
ever fuller draughts, and thus the one talent was 
doubled and quadrupled and multiplied an hun- 
dredfold. In him the Christ-given power of rais- 
ing and blessing all classes and kinds of the de- 
pressed and wronged and suffering had a resplen- 
dent manifestation, a series of signal successes and 



174 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



glorious triumphs, such as had not been witnessed 
since the age of the apostles. 

Equally where the five talents have been given, 
the thorough and persevering culture of the reli- 
gious nature has borne a foremost part in making 
the five ten, and many times ten. How eminently 
true is this in poetry ! You can hardly name a 
poet who has had, or who promises to have endur- 
ing fame, who has not, like Milton, sole and un- 
rivaled in song, sought inspiration from the brook 
that flows " fast by the oracle of God." It is this 
spiritual industry, this patient soul-thrift, this un- 
ceasing aim at the highest and best that the human 
soul can attain and be, which, more than capacity 
independent of consecration, has made Whittier, 
the village shoemaker, second to no poet of our 
time in blended strength and sweetness. He but 
defines his own diligent and noble lifework in one 
of the stanzas of that glorious hymn of his which 
one cannot read the hundredth time without fresh 
emotion, — 

" Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
What may thy service he ? 
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But simply following thee." 

I have spoken of great lives, which very few 
are fitted or destined to lead. It is therefore of 
more consequence that we consider the application 



THREE PARABLES. 



175 



of this parable to our common life, and I would say 
emphatically, — There is no position in life, into 
which a man may not put all that there is in him 
of culture, refinement, and moral worth, to his own 
honor and to the benefit of his fellow-men. It is 
not the place that makes the man, but the man 
that makes the place. The maker puts all that is 
in him into what he makes, the doer into what he 
does. The entire Deity is so enshrined in all his 
works that, with the inward eye fully opened, we 
should find englobed in the field-flower or the leaf- 
bud the same attributes that are revealed in the 
courses of the stars and the march of worlds ; and 
in like manner those who are thoroughly renewed 
in his spirit can so embody their entire selfhood in 
common activities and humble duties, as to make 
that which were else small great, that which, were 
else mean lofty, that which were else earthy, hea- 
venly and divine. 

In treating of the second I have been inevitably 
trenching on the ground covered by the third par- 
able. How are we to employ our talents, the 
powers given us by God, — the powers enlarged 
and multiplied by our own diligent culture ? It 
hardly needs to be said that the requirements of 
the second parable can be met only by lives of 
stainless purity and of inflexible truth and upright- 
ness ; for all that is mean, dishonest, false, or vile 



176 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



is as harmful to one's growth in intellect and in 
capacity as to his spiritual well-being. No bad 
man can make of his talents what ought to be 
made of them. But the third parable prescribes 
more than the avoidance of evil. It defines the 
use and end for which our talents are bestowed, 
and as to which the Divine Master requires a strict 
account of every servant. Mark, — this third is a 
parable, not a prophecy. It is sometimes regarded 
as a prophetic description of the last judgment (so- 
called). This last judgment, however, is a mere 
figment of the theologians, founded in part on this 
parable, but not authorized by it, — a harmful fig- 
ment too ; for in relegating the thought of judgment 
to a period indefinitely remote, it has made men 
unmindful of the judgment-seat never unoccupied 
and the books ever open. The teaching of Christ 
and his apostles is that the soul goes to its own 
place, receives according to the deeds done in the 
body, at death, not at some far-off period of general 
assizes. But the parable, which has all the marks 
of a parable, represents a gathering of the nations 
of the dead before the Supreme Judge, and the 
passing upon them of the sentence of approval or 
of condemnation, according as their lives have been 
generous or selfish, devoted to human good or to 
personal ease, emolument, or ambition. In point 
of fact, it is not only as stars in heaven, but as 



THREE PARABLES. 



177 



centres of light on the earth, that the unselfish, and 
they alone, shine. There have been not infrequent 
instances of the most diligent and persevering cul- 
ture of capacities large even at the outset, where 
the life has been self-centred and loveless; and 
such men have shone, not as suns or as stars, but as 
oven-fires, intensely brilliant, yet diffusing neither 
light nor heat, and early quenched in utter dark- 
ness ; while those whose names endure and are held 
precious, saints and heroes, sages, poets and artists, 
patriots and philanthropists, those equally who in 
quiet ways and lowly spheres, as they have gone 
about doing good, have trailed after them and left 
behind them lines of living light, — all these have 
lived, not for greed or for fame, but that they 
might do, each in his place and calling, the' work 
which God had given them to do, for the solace, 
comfort, growth, uplifting, eternal salvation, of 
their fellow-men. All such the Judge recognizes 
as his own benefactors, because they have served 
those whom in his tender love he identifies with his 
very self, and they have thus won his gratitude as 
if what is done for man were done directly for 
him. 

Did not time fail me, there is hardly need that I 
say more. The parables themselves are their own 
best exposition and commentary. Separately, they 
are profoundly impressive ; immeasurably more so, 



178 



KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS. 



when taken as they were uttered, consecutively, as 
parts of a whole. To us the dying Saviour says, 
" Be ye also ready ; for ye know neither the 
day nor the hour " when ye shall be called hence. 
How shall you be thus ready ? Only by put- 
ting to their full use and increase whatever powers 
and capacities God has given you. How are you 
to employ them ? In doing good, — in making the 
world the happier and the better, — in giving ever 
new joy to him whom you serve and gladden, when- 
ever you serve even the least of that race not one of 
whom does he scorn to reckon among his brethren. 
Thus prepare for death by filling life to the full 
with duty and with usefulness, and you shall wake 
from the death-slumber to the summons, " Come, 
ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundation of the world." 



SERMON XV. 



BEAUTY. 

" He hath made everything beautiful in his time." — Eccl. iii. 11. 

"He hath made everything beautiful in his 
time," or rather, in its time, his being generally 
employed in our English Bible for its, which was 
just coming into use when our translation was 
made. 

Have not many of you said with regard to the 
past spring and the opening summer, This is the 
most beautiful season that I have ever seen ? And 
have you not often said the same in former years ? 
In saying so you have told what is or ought to be 
the truth with every one of us. Nature is no more 
beautiful to-day than it has been before ; but our 
receptivity has grown, or ought to have grown. 
There is always around us a wealth of beauty far 
beyond our utmost capacity of feeling and enjoy- 
ing, and the more we are aesthetically, morally, 
spiritually, the more of it we can take in, and trans- 
mute into gladness, praise, and love. There is a 
sense in which the maker always puts his whole 



180 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



self into what he makes ; and could we interpret 
nature as we think we can a written book, we 
should find everywhere the Infinite mirrored in the 
finite. This is the reason why we are never tired 
of nature. I should hardly dare to live always 
near the works of human art which I most admire ; 
they are more to me because the Atlantic inter- 
venes, though there are some of them which it is 
worth the voyage to see. While full of the divine 
inspiration, they yet are human works ; their con- 
tents are finite, and by long familiarity with them 
I might in process of time take in all that they 
have for me, might outgrow their vivid interest, 
might become weary of them. But not so with 
the panorama about me in the outer w T orld, which 
is as fresh and new to me as when I first awoke to 
its loveliness, and is yielding me a richer revenue 
than it ever did before. 

"He hath made everything beautiful.'' There is 
no so sure token of the Creator as the beauty that 
is in all nature, — a token which loses none of 
its authenticity, but even gains force, in connec- 
tion with the evolution theory. According to this 
theory every essential organ and member of every 
plant and animal was developed by need and per- 
fected by use, while those belonging to lower, but 
no longer serviceable to higher orders of the series 
have left vestiges of themselves as waymarks in the 



BEAUTY. 



181 



progress of development. All this may be true — 
if I were a scientific physiologist I probably should 
feel sure of its truth — - as to the functional or^an- 
ism of plants and animals ; and yet there would re- 
main much that serves no functional purpose and 
can never have served any. Over and above all 
possible use, present or past, we see a superfluity of 
beauty, — flowers of the richest dye and most grace- 
ful contour a hundredfold larger than are needed 
to shelter the tiny seed ripening at their base, iri- 
descent plumage which gives the bird no added 
speed or power, in fine, numberless combinations 
which have no imaginable purpose but to adorn the 
gala-robes which are nature's working-day dress. 
In point of fact, the phenomena in nature which 
lie outside of any conceivable course of develop- 
ment or series of evolutions far exceed in number 
and in magnitude those that fall readily into line 
under the wand of the scientist. We may then 
throw aside the old theory of specific creation, and 
derive the entire framework of organized being 
from self -plastic energy in primitive monads ; and 
yet we shall find a power beyond self -developing 
nature that has fringed and garlanded the whole 
ascending series in the scale of being with rich and 
varied beauty, betokening a benignant Creator, 
whose joy-giving spirit has nowhere left itself with- 
out a witness. 



182 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

" He hath made everything beautiful in its 
time" and the changing beauty of the outward 
world is an ever fresh revelation of the Creator, 
adapted to renew day by day the loving adoration 
of his children. No phasis of the outward world 
lasts long enough to stagnate in our thought. We 
have not ceased to marvel anew at the thin leafage 
oi spring, hardly less ethereal than the fleecy clouds 
that bend over it, when we are surprised by the 
outburst of bloom and the dense foliage through 
which the sunbeams find no passage. Summer 
kindles faster than we can count the days into the 
gold and scarlet of the autumn forests and the 
kaleidoscopic splendor of the October sunset skies. 
Autumn seems short when we are overtaken by 
the hoary majesty of winter, with its glittering 
wreaths and fantastic masses of driven snow, its 
stalactites from roof and tree, and those glorious 
nights, when the moon, conqueror and queen in a 
cloudless sky, is mirrored in frost-crystals pure and 
white as her own radiance. Thus along the lyre- 
strings of universal nature throb ever new strains 
of harmony, as if the Creator willed that the tones 
should never pall upon the listening ear, and never 
cease to call forth from the soul responsive notes 
of loving praise and worship. 

" He hath made everything beautiful in its 
time." There are, indeed, interludes that have no 



BEAUTY. 



183 



present charm, yet none the less beautiful. There 
are those dreary spring rains, when for days to- 
gether neither sun nor star appears, and nature 
wears a funeral robe. But what wonderful quick- 
ening of beautiful life under that genial baptism ! 
What heaving of earth-clods with the germs of 
flower and blossom and golden grain ! What 
eager drinking in through the living mouths of un- 
numbered rootlets from the river of God which is 
full of water ! Thus in all that seems forlorn and 
desolate we have only the laboratory of beauty ; 
while suspended vision gives but a deeper glow, a 
fuller joy, when nature smiles again, and what was 
wrought in darkness reveals itself in the broad sun- 
light, gladdened, enriched, glorified. 

The definite purpose to embody beauty in the 
order of nature is especially manifest in the persis- 
tency and constancy of beauty throughout the in- 
evitable changes of a system in which decay and 
dissolution are perpetual, in which death feeds 
life, and life while it lasts is prolonged only by dy- 
ing daily. Were the problem presented to a theo- 
retic world-builder of a world in which the external 
tokens and aspects of vigorous and fruitful life 
shall alternate with periods, as long or longer, of life 
fading, extinct, and renewed by infinitesimal incre- 
ments, he might provide in his scheme for some 
fair show of blossoming, fruitage, and exuberant 



184 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



gladness ; but so to embroider the veil thrown over 
retreating and perishing life as to make it more 
gorgeously and gloriously beautiful than that whose 
vanished splendor it covers, would transcend the 
wildest dream of the most sanguine cosmogonist, 
yet is perfectly realized every year in the changing 
seasons that are full of God. 

Equally with regard to the varied experiences of 
the earthly life, God has made everything beau- 
tiful in its time. It is with us in life as it is in 
our climate, — the clear and sunny days far outnum- 
ber the cloudy and stormy. Happiness is the cur- 
rent ; sorrow the ripple on its bosom. How many 
for us are the days that rise and set without a cloud ! 
It is not when we call ourselves happy that we are 
the most happy. Indeed, when enjoyment is our 
special aim, I think that there is almost always 
some shadow of disappointment. When we pause 
and sa} T , "I am happy," there is something less 
than happiness. But we are so constituted that 
our fullest enjoyment is found when we are quietly 
filling our place and doing our duty, when we know 
that we are faithful and useful, when the extensor 
muscles of the inner man are in vigorous and health- 
ful exercise, when every day brings its fitting work 
and every nightfall sees it finished. In this life 
which we may all lead if we will, there is the 
beauty of a divine fitness and order, — of harmony 



BEAUTY. 



185 



with kindred lives, not only on earth, but in 
heaven; for what higher joy than faithful duty 
can we hope in heaven ? 

But in the darkened seasons through which we 
must all pass, there is or may be even a richer 
beauty, though hidden for the moment ; for as 
under the rain-soaked and wind-swept furrows of 
the spring the hope of the year is bursting into 
life, so beneath the rains and dews of an afflictive 
Providence God is ripening for us his harvest of 
purer desires, nobler purposes, higher aspirations, 
hopes that lay hold on the life eternal. Then w r hen 
the sun shines again, and life again smiles, if we 
have indeed yielded our souls to the tilth of the 
heavenly Husbandman, there is for us, if a more 
sober, yet a richer beauty, in the knowledge of di- 
vine things into which our faith has ripened, in the 
experience of the Almighty love to which we betook 
ourselves for shelter in the storm, in the closer kin- 
ship with heaven which, it may be, could have been 
opened for us only by some of the best beloved 
who have gone before us, and in the more faithful 
diligence with which we make all our steps on earth 
tend heavenward. 

In death, too, as God would have it, as Christ 
has made it, as the rays of the resurrection morn- 
ing rest upon it, is there not a solemn beauty ? not 
indeed in the grave, not in the earth-garments 



186 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



which we drop, but in the spirit-robes in which we 
rejoin those who have passed on before us, and 
eDter into the joy of our Lord. 

But as in outward nature, so in life and death, it 
is He that makes everything beautiful in its time, 
— he alone, his love and service, the faith and hope 
of his gospel, the Guide, Saviour, and Redeemer 
whom he has given us. As it is beneath his bless- 
ing that nature puts on her singing robes, so it is 
through him in us, as his living spirit is the life of 
our lives, that they can be truly beautiful. 

In sin, alone of all things on earth, there is no 
beauty. Yet as the exuberance of spring and sum- 
mer verdure festoons even the soilless crags with 
living green, and sprouts luxuriantly from every 
cranny and crevice, so are the arid sin-wastes 
of humanity garlanded with redeeming love, as, 
springing from the Saviour's cross, it has blossomed 
and borne fruit in the self-denying toil and sacri- 
fice of heroic and philanthropic souls — apostles, 
missionaries, martyrs, great men of God, humble 
saints whose only record is in heaven, delicately 
nurtured women, too, who in saving souls have 
shrunk from no service however arduous, no peril 
however fearful — the whole host of God's elect 
who have made their Master's work their own. Oh, 
there is to the spiritual vision no beauty like that 
of the holy, blessed lives that have been consecrated 



BEAUTY. 



187 



to the salvation of their brethren. Then, too, 
when sin is not covered, but washed away, when 
from the laver of penitence the cleansed spirit re- 
turns to God and gives joy in heaven, then is there 
" beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the 
garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." 
But sin, while it lasts, is only deformity and deso- 
lation. It is the only blight on God's creation, — 
all that makes this world of ours other than the 
type, the prophecy, the forecourt of heaven. Now, 
then, while everything is beautiful without, be it 
ours to make all within beautiful. Let us build up 
the waste places in our souls. Let us fill the desert 
spots in our lives with plants of our Heavenly 
Father's planting, that instead of the thorn may 
come up the fir-tree, instead of the briar the myrtle. 
Then in us shall God have made everything beau- 
tiful in its time. 



SERMON XVI. 



THE SONS OF GOD. 
" Whose son is he ? " — Matt. xxii. 42. 

A question which often is found equivalent to 
asking, Who, or what manner of person is he? 
J esus asked this concerning the expected Messiah, 
and the Pharisees replied, " The son of David," an 
ancestry which Jesus did not deny, for he could 
not, but on which he never based a claim, for he 
could not. Two more unlike persons can hardly 
be found in the world's history, — the one a more 
than half-savage tyrant, who, if in spasms of re- 
morse and of devout feeling he indeed wrote those 
glorious lyrics which bear his name, yet may have 
had some other authorship, still, even in some of 
these blended imprecation with thanksgiving, and 
who disgraced his throne by lust and murder ; the 
other, one whose whole life- record may be comprised 
in the two entries, " He did alwaj T s the things that 
pleased God," and " He went about doing good." 
If there is anything valid in the law of heredity, 
the twenty-eight generations that intervened be- 
tween the ancestor and the descendant were none 
too many. 



THE SONS OF GOD. 



189 



Jesus himself claimed to be heard, obeyed, and 
followed, as the Son, not of David, but of God. 
The creeds and church covenants all call him so. 
But why ? They give no credentials, no proofs, no 
birthmarks. I might believe all that they say, and 
yet recognize no tokens of sonship. If the ancient 
creeds which some churches hold in almost super- 
stitious veneration contained all that was to be 
known about Jesus, I do not believe that these 
creeds would be extant now, or that Jesus would 
have left in the world's history any trace of his ex- 
istence. I have no fault to find with the creeds, — 
indeed, in the oldest of them, miscalled, yet not un- 
worthy to be called, the Apostles' Creed, I should 
want to make only very slight changes in order to 
bring it into conformity with my own belief ; but 
I do not find there the Emmanuel, the Christ to 
whom I have been accustomed from my infancy 
to look with admiring and adoring love. He lies 
entirely outside of these compends of faith. He 
might have been all that they say, and yet no 
heart have ever had a quicker throb in thinking of 
him, no life have ever been consecrated lovingly to 
his service. For they tell us nothing of his walks 
of mercy in Galilee, of his not spurning the touch 
of the loathsome leper, of his taking those dear 
little children in his arms, — poor, shabbily attired 
children they must indeed have been to have been 



190 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



brought for the blessing of an unhonored wayfarer, 
— of his kindly thought for the family of the Gad- 
arene lunatic, sending him home to announce in 
his own person his restoration from worse than 
death, of the scenes at the gate of Nain and the 
tomb of Bethany, of his tender compassion for the 
outcast sinner, of the undying love that breathed 
in intercession, forgiveness, benediction on the 
cross. These are his birthmarks as the Son of 
God. They were his only answer when John sent 
to ask, Art thou he that should come ? They are 
worth immeasurably more than all the volumes of 
Evidences of Christianity that were ever written, 
and but for them Christianity would not have sur- 
vived to have its evidences written, nay, would 
have perished, new-born, with its Founder. 

We believe Jesus to have been the Son of God, 
in a sense unequaled, and seldom approached ex- 
cept by his close followers, because we see in him 
meekness, benignity, sweetness, mercy, purity, holi- 
ness, which can have had its fatherhood only in 
the Divine perfectness ; for in his time and sur- 
roundings, such peerless excellence could not have 
been derived from human tradition, precept, or ex- 
ample ; nor yet can an impersonal Nature, though 
full of God, have shaped and inspired a human 
soul and life in so entire conformity with our high- 
est conception of God's moral attributes. This 



THE SONS OF GOD. 



191 



parentage Christ constantly claims and fully au- 
thenticates. 

But heredity has a reflex meaning. How much 
do we often learn of a father whom we have never 
seen from a son who is said to be like him ! The 
instances are by no means wanting in which the 
beauty or the splendor of a son's life has taught us 
more of his father than we have been able to gather 
from all surviving reminiscences of his genius or 
his transcending moral worth. Jesus recognizes 
this principle. In all that he says of the Father, 
he makes him like himself in his moral attributes. 
A Christlike God is the only conception that we 
can get from the Gospels. Thus how precisely like 
Christ is the Father in the parable of the prodi- 
gal son, in his pitying love and prompt forgive- 
ness ! How un-Christlike is the Father of some 
happily obsolescent theologies, who has neither 
house-room nor heart-room for the repentant pro- 
digal till his innocent brother takes in his stead the 
penalty for his guilt ! In point of fact, men, in- 
stead of a God in Christ's likeness, have shaped to 
themselves a God after their own likeness, and 
have regarded it as their duty, even their privilege 
to be like him. Therefore is it that men bearing 
the Christian name have glorified war, have per- 
secuted, slandered, slain their fellow -Christians, 
have made punishments vindictive, but hardly ever 



192 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

reformatory, and have divorced from religion the 
gentler virtues which render it supremely lovely. 
It is solely because of this false God that the terms 
" unforgiving Christian," " resentful Christian," 
are not deemed as self-contradictory and absurd as 
" Christian drunkard " and " Christian debauchee." 

I want to lay intense stress on this point. The 
prevalent theology of the Scotch Presbyterians and 
the English Puritans, imported by them into our 
new world, presented for man's faith a God utterly 
un-Christlike, — a God whose chief attribute was 
what was miscalled justice, — miscalled I say ; for 
mercy, which every being owes to every other, is an 
essential part of justice, and nothing is more un- 
just than what is called inexorable justice. I care 
little for denominational names and divisions, so 
long as this loveless image of our Father in heaven 
is rapidly fading from the churches in which it has 
borne sway. " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father," is the sum and substance of Christian- 
ity ; and if this be received as the truth underlying 
all else, it matters little whether the necessarily in- 
adequate conception of the Infinite God be three- 
fold or in undivided unity. 

It is perfectly evident that the prime aim and 
purpose of Jesus was to show the Father. Even his 
service to the race as an exemplar is secondary to 
this ; for if it is not God's likeness that we see in 



THE SONS OF GOD. 



193 



Christ, what reason in the world is there for fol- 
lowing him rather than any other man ? We walk 
in his steps, that we may thus be followers of his 
and our Father. 

But are we his children ? The question of our 
text may be fitly asked as to each one of us, 
"Whose son is he?" God's indeed, in a certain 
sense ; but it may be in a far remoter parentage, and 
by a much longer line of ancestry, than Christ's 
from David. It is the last link in the chain which 
the evangelist specifies when he writes, " Which was 
the son of Adam, which was the son of God," and if 
the evolution-theory be accepted, we must go back 
myriads of seons farther to the time when the Om- 
nipotent endowed the atoms of weltering chaos with 
the power of organism and of progressive develop- 
ment. But there is a more immediate sonship. 
From Christ, the elder brother, have been trans- 
mitted the healing touch, the soothing word, the 
offices of love in which hand, mind, and soul bear 
equal part ; the life of purity, devotion, and benefi- 
cence which blesses all within its sphere, and sheds 
around itself a beatific radiance ; and these are 
as authentic birthmarks now as when they beto- 
kened Jesus to be the Son of God. There is a 
type of soul, a frame of the inmost spirit, not 
fashioned by contact with external nurture, nor 
moulded by society even at its best, nor shaped in 



194 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

the world's school, but growing only from that 
close communion, which is a partaking also, with 
and of the Infinite Love, and in Christian souls 
from communion with and partaking of the Infinite 
Love incarnate. The character thus formed has at 
heart loyalty and love to the Father, God, and from 
this source the life must flow in purity, in sweet- 
ness, in diffusive benevolence, and must more and 
more fully exhibit those finer lines and more deli- 
cate tints which make up the consummate beauty 
of holiness. Now let it be borne in mind that the 
creation of such souls, the raising up of such chil- 
dren for the Father in heaven, is the greatest and 
best work that can be done upon this earth, that 
whatever else Christ may or may not have done is 
in the comparison of very small concern, and that 
in doing this he may claim every title of reverence, 
honor, and love that human gratitude can confer. 

Here, though by way of parenthesis, let me say 
a word as to the objection sometimes made, that a 
merely perfect man could not be spoken of as the 
evangelists constantly speak of Jesus Christ. I 
would say, drop that word merely ; for the term 
perfect man is a superlative. There is no greater 
being in God's universe. If there be heaven-born 
angels, they hold a far lower place ; for they have 
not had the power of sinning or the discipline of 
suffering ; theirs has not been the internecine con- 



THE SONS OF GOD. 



195 



flict, the victory, the triumph. Therefore he who 
alone has borne through the severest fortunes of 
mortal life his divine humanity unstained, un- 
dimmed, has his due place " at God's right hand in 
the heavens, far above all principality, and power, 
and might, and dominion, and every name that is 
named." 

To return, of the Christlike character there is 
but one type. The sons of God all bear birthmarks 
the same in kind, though differing in degree and 
in grouping ; and they are such as they might re- 
cognize in one another, if they chose ; but they 
often do not so choose. It is as if the children of 
a large family, who all looked alike, and had been 
brought up alike, and were not unlike in character 
and conduct, were to refuse to call one another 
brother and sister because they could not agree in 
the same story about something that their father 
said or did before any of them were born. That 
among the genuine children of God there should be 
wide differences of opinion about their Father must 
necessarily be the case, when we consider that in 
the vastness of his nature even things that seem 
contradictory may be but different parts or aspects 
of the same truth, and that on so profound a 
theme even revelation must by reason of the in- 
competency and poverty of language conceal much 
more than it can make known. But none of 



196 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

these differences of opinion relate either to God's 
actual fatherhood or to the birthmarks which his 
children bear. I have lived long enough and have 
seen a sufficient diversity of people to speak with 
some authority, and I verily believe that if it 
were once understood that the term Christian 
means a Christlike man or woman and nothing less 
or more, the most rigid sectarian would often re- 
cognize his nearest spiritual kindred among those 
whom he now regards as hardly worthy of his tol- 
erance, and whom, were such penalties for heresy 
still in vogue, he would gladly burn. 

No man can have less liking for Romanism, as 
Romanism, than I have. Yet were I to make a cata- 
logue of modern saints, there are not a few Roman- 
ists whom I should want to canonize. The last bi- 
ography that I read was the life of Lady Georgiana 
Fullerton, who, born in affluence, reared in luxury, 
belonging to the most brilliant aristocracy of the 
realm, led a life of constant self-denial and self-sacri- 
fice, feeling all the time, as she gave her angel pre- 
sence in the lowliest and most loathsome abodes of 
want, suffering, and sin, that she was but paying an 
infinitesimal installment of her immeasurable debt 
to him who gave himself for us all. How many of 
such lives can we find, also, in various Protestant 
sects, in which we are sadly prone to overlook the 
traits of genuine Christ-likeness for peculiarities, 



THE SONS OF GOB, 



197 



it may be perfectly harmless, with which we have 
no sympathy ! 

" Other sheep I have," says Jesus, " who are not 
of this fold," and though we derive our sonship 
through Christ, our elder brother, we little under- 
stand his revelation of the Father, if we forget that 
he is none the less present, omnipotent in mercy, 
and capable of self-revelation, with many, many 
souls beyond the Christian fold who are joint heirs 
with the Christ whom they first know in heaven. 

I read two or three weeks ago, in the Remi- 
niscences of Rev. Mr. Rogers, a divine of the 
Anglican Church, a narrative that affected me 
deeply. This Mr. Rogers is Rector of St. Botolph's 
Church, in London, in a quarter where Christians 
are few, and Jews of the poorer sort make up tho 
greater part of the population. He utilizes the 
large revenues of his church in such Christian work 
as is most needed in the surrounding district. He 
announced that on a certain Sunday evening he 
should preach a charity sermon, and take up a con- 
tribution for the relief of the Jews then recently 
expelled from Russia. When he came to church, 
instead of a small Christian congregation, he found 
the edifice absolutely crowded with Jews, and when 
he gave out the hymn, " Guide me, O thou great 
Jehovah," the vast congregation, Jew and Gentile, 
joined in the service of song with such intensity 



198 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



and fervor, that it seemed as if the roof of the 
church would be lifted with the volume of ascend- 
ing praise. The contribution was large beyond all 
expectation. After the service a very poor old 
clothes' man, whom Mr. Rogers knew, came into 
the vestry, and offered half a crown, asking for six- 
pence in change, because it was the only money he 
had, and he needed the sixpence to buy his morn- 
ing's breakfast. I could not but feel that if Jesus 
had been there in bodily form, as he was in spirit, 
his own blessed voice would have blended with 
those of his fellow-countrymen as they sang " the 
Lord's song in a strange land," and that he would 
have gone from pew to pew, and laid his hand on 
many a head, claiming them as of his flock, though 
not of his fold ; while for the man who scanted him- 
self in his daily bread for the sake of those still 
poorer, he would have repeated with special empha- 
sis his blessing on the widow with her two mites. 

As I have already said, the law of heredity has 
its reflex bearing. The father is known through his 
children. Is there any other way in our time in 
which our Father, God, can be so fully known? 
Nature has its mysteries and its horrors ; the course 
of events, its dark passages and tortuous labyrinths 
of which we have neither chart nor clew. Of the 
Providence that girdles the universe, with its poles 
in the twin eternities, the arc within our cognizance 



THE SONS OF GOD. 



199 



is too infinitesimal for our calculus. And were it 
not so, were there neither obscurity nor suffering, 
even an earthly Paradise could not reveal the very 
heart of God, any more than an affluent home can 
reveal the depth, richness, beauty, of a father's 
tender care or a mother's unslumbering love. A 
person, whether human or divine, cannot have an 
adequate impersonal manifestation. Therefore is 
it that Jesus says, " Let your light so shine before 
men, that they may see your good works, and glo- 
rify your Father in heaven." We, my friends, can 
show and ought to show the Christlike God whom 
we worship, by being ourselves Christlike. Your 
and my danger is that we show not a false, but an 
inadequate reflection. We need each to ask him- 
self, " Is there that in my life and character in which 
God makes himself seen and felt ? Can I hope that 
those who know me will feel that through me they 
know God the better, can be drawn to a dearer love 
of him and a more faithful service ? " There is not 
a divine trait in Christ, which may not be ours, 
and for which men may not glorify God in us. 

Now suppose such characters multiplied. Sup- 
pose only a single church thus constituted, from 
its diversities of age, culture, condition, calling, as 
from a mirror with unnumbered facets, presenting 
in many-colored glory the primitive rays of eternal 
light in the Father's countenance, it would exert 



200 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

an evangelizing power such as the world has never 
witnessed, but such as St. Paul saw in prophetic 
vision, and evidently thought it near, when he 
wrote, "The earnest expectation of the creature, 
that is, of all things created, waiteth for the mani- 
festation of the sons of God," of the sons who show 
the Father, — for that combined, manifold, cumu- 
lative manifestation which shall convince, persuade, 
renew, sanctify, redeem entire humanity. 

It must be admitted that there is no such collec- 
tive manifestation now, — no community, no body 
of Christians, that gives a true and adequate re- 
flection of the divine image. I have unbounded 
reverence for the missionary enterprise ; but until 
Christianity can make a better show of itself, the 
missionaries can effect very little. Wherever they 
go, Satan sends before or with them his mission- 
aries tenfold in number and in efficiency. I believe 
it to be a fact, and it is a typical fact, that the very 
vessel that carried the first American missionaries 
to the Eastern hemisphere had rum for its cargo. 
The missionaries, too, have often been like the men 
that in Nehemiah's time rebuilt the wall of Jeru- 
salem, who with one hand wrought in the work, and 
with the other held a weapon ; for those of rival 
sects have often maintained an armed truce, — and 
not always a truce, — rather than peace in their 
fields of missionary labor. Meanwhile there is no 



THE SONS OF GOD. 



201 



way in which those outside of Christendom can see 
any collective exhibition of Christian life and char- 
acter ; but as they gain a more extended know- 
ledge of the actual condition of Christendom, they 
must behold much that is absolutely repulsive. I 
have always felt great respect, as for a truly Chris- 
tian soul, for a former emperor of China who ban- 
ished the missionaries, saying, " Wherever these 
Christians come, they whiten the soil with dead 
men's bones." 

Equally is the collective manifestation of the 
sons of God needed at home and all around us in 
the growth, to which we cannot be blind, of world- 
liness, indifference, unbelief, and still more, of a 
broad hospitality of mind for every last new utter- 
ance of self-commissioned seers and agitators, how- 
ever absurd or vapid. The (so-called) evidences 
of Christianity are all that they ever were ; but in 
our fast age who reads them or cares for them ? 
No testimony in behalf of a religion two thousand 
years old can arrest and hold the public mind, in 
these times when novelty treads on the heels of 
novelty, and the marvel of yesterday has to-day be- 
come obsolete. What is needed is the evidence of 
a religion at this very moment as young, fresh, new, 
and strong as when its divine words fell from its 
Founder's lips and were crystallized in his life. 

To the manifestation of the sons of God two 
things are indispensable. The first is that Chris- 



202 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

tians of every name and form shall regard Christ- 
likeness as the one prime aim and endeavor, as the 
only thing that can make them Christians, as that 
without which sound doctrine and ritual conformity 
are always worthless, and, even worse, utterly con- 
temptible when they are made, as they sometimes 
are, a substitute for character, or an apology for 
defective character. The second is that those who 
are making Christ-likeness their supreme aim shall 
recognize Christ-likeness as a token and bond of 
brotherhood wherever they find it, under whatever 
secondary name, in whatever compartment of the 
Christian fold, in whatever outside pasture, Jewish 
or Pagan. In both these directions (and they are 
virtually one) there has been progress of late, yet 
still slow. But collective manifestation can be 
only the aggregate of individual manifestations, 
which must seem few and sparse at first. You and 
I may bear our part toward this grand result, by 
truth, purity, uprightness, piety befitting the sons 
of God, and by a charity that shall leave none of 
his household beyond its pale ; and as fast as the 
Church shall awake to this her need and duty, and 
shall show herself in her redemption-robes, pure and 
white as that of Christ's own righteousness, his 
prayer will have its answer, " that they all may be 
one, even as we are one, I in them, and thou in me, 
that the world may know [and till then the world 
will never know] that thou hast sent me." 



SERMON XVII. 



THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEART. 
" The hidden man of the heart." — 1 Peter iii. 4. 

I crave this morning the special attention of 
my younger hearers, not because my sermon will 
concern them only or chiefly, but because I am go- 
ing to speak of character, which is more easily 
formed in earlier than re-formed in later years. 

It is a striking fact that among the signal wrecks 
of character that have been multiplied of late, a 
large proportion have been those of reputedly 
Christian men, and in some cases, of men of emi- 
nently high standing as Christians. I should be 
glad to believe them all hypocrites. They would 
in that case have rendered a priceless testimony to 
the real worth and the normal genuineness of the 
Christian name and profession ; for men counter- 
feit only that which has an intrinsic and established 
value, — base coin is not worth counterfeiting. But 
I have no doubt that most of these men were sin- 
cere in their religious profession, that they had 
strong religious feeling, and that they were entirely 
unaware that they lacked religious principle, or 



204 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

else thought that if the feeling were right, it would 
supply the place and do the work of principle. 
Now it seems to me certain that there may be 
strong and earnest religious or quasi-religious feel- 
ing, which has not its seat, centre, and source in 
the hidden man of the heart. 

Let me explain. In the human body there are 
sympathetic nerves, through which a feeling may 
be perceived at a point remote from its source. A 
pain in the left arm may proceed from the lungs. 
The heart may be sound, and yet thrown into wild 
disturbance by inflammation of the brain. Weari- 
ness of the limbs is often felt more in the head 
than in arm or leg. On the other hand, any health- 
ful stimulus given to the organs of respiration or 
of digestion is felt, not in them, but in the clear 
brain, the firm tread, the strong hand-grasp. The 
case is analogous as to mind and soul. There are 
sympathetic spirit-nerves running through taste and 
feeling, the cognitive and the active powers, human 
loves and Godward sensibilities, so that there may 
be extreme sensitiveness remote from its source, 
and, in particular, strong religious emotion from 
sources not in any proper sense religious. 

Thus the aesthetic sense very readily takes on 
the form and seems redolent of the spirit of de- 
votion. When all that art can contribute ren- 
ders worship grand and beautiful, the whole inward 



THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEART. 205 



nature is uplifted, praise flows with fervor, prayer 
seems as if floated heavenward on angels' wings, 
and sweet and tender thoughts cluster^ in ever 
denser groups about sacred names and themes. 
There are words in collect, canticle, and chant, 
which cannot be said, sung, or heard without thrill- 
ing ear and soul with awe or with delight. The 
love of these paraphernalia of the sanctuary not in- 
frequently becomes a passion, so that the secular 
life crystallizes around them, and one seems to live 
for them and in them. Yet it is often merely a re- 
fined fetichism, — a worship of the temple or the 
altar rather than of the present God who makes it 
sacred. Now I have not a word to say against re- 
ligious rites. I hold them in high esteem. They 
deserve to be prized, cherished, and made impres- 
sive ; for they have their value in nourishing piety, 
and still greater worth in giving it expression and 
utterance not wholly inadequate to its majesty and 
beauty. But when they are made the be-all and 
the end-all of religion, they are among the most 
insidious and perilous of soul-traps. 

In like manner sectarian zeal is prone to clothe 
itself in one's own consciousness in the garb of 
earnest devotion. A strong interest, primarily in- 
tellectual, yet overflowing its source, attaches itself, 
not only to the fundamental truths, but even more, 
to the controverted doctrines of Christianity. They 



206 KING'S CHAPEL SEE MON S. 

are profoundly felt. The champion of his sect is 
no heartless combatant. He loves the cause for 
which he contends, and the more he fights for it, 
the more dearly does he love it. His heart-strings 
twine closely and tenderly around each separate 
dogma. He deems his own well-being for time and 
for eternity to be identified with his creed, and he 
sincerely yearns to make those about him and those 
far from him, and, were it possible, all the kindreds 
of men partakers of this blessedness. It is in the 
goodness of his heart, in a generosity like that in 
which he would give bread to the hungry, only with 
a stronger impulse of benevolence, as he thinks that 
he is dispensing the bread that comes down from 
heaven, that he becomes foremost in exhortation, 
in movements of propagandise, in all measures for 
kindling religious life in the surrounding world. 
Meanwhile he has done little or nothing for his own 
self-culture, and because his emotional nature has 
been so strongly enlisted and so deeply moved in 
connection with what he regards as vital truth, he 
thinks himself perfectly safe, and is entirely un- 
aware of some leak in his moral selfhood, through 
which his soul's life-blood has long been slowly 
wasting itself, and will soon burst out in a sudden 
torrent of shame and agony. Now let me not be 
misunderstood. I would have men seek carefully 
for the truth, maintain their opinions firmly, and 



THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEABT. 207 



diffuse and propagate them by all means consistent 
with justice and charity. But I would have them 
remember that the faith which saves the soul is 
something more individual, inward, and intimate 
than the soundest belief, and that without this faith 
the Christian propagandist is on a lower plane than 
the apostle assigns to the devils, who also believe, 
and at the same time have the grace to tremble. 

What is most appropriately called Christian 
work is attended by a similar danger. It is re- 
lated of Wilberforce that when a sanctimonious 
friend one day asked him about the condition of 
his soul, he replied, " I have been so busy about 
those poor negroes that I have forgotten that I had 
a soul." He could afford to say so ; for years of 
patient and prayerful soul-thrift had placed him in 
a position in which his unwearying work was a 
prayer without ceasing, and his daily walk, a walk 
with God. But his words express, it may be 
feared, the state of not a few souls, which, while 
crowded with philanthropic labor, are really very 
meagre and needy. There is in such work, when 
it glows and grows under willing hands, a most 
blessed consciousness of actual service to the needs 
of humanity, of community of interest with all holy 
souls on earth and in heaven, of intimate fellowship 
with Christ, of being the almoner of the Eternal 
Father. It is a consciousness which no one can 



208 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



forego without starving his own soul, and scanting 
to an infinitesimal quantity whatever of the grace 
of God may be in his own heart. Yet this con- 
sciousness has existed, with beatific fullness, in 
lives of marvelous sweetness and beauty, which 
yet in the time of strong temptation have shown 
the utter lack of firm religious principle. There 
are at this moment, suffering the not unmerited 
penalty of violated trusts, men on whom rest accu- 
mulated benedictions and for whom go up agoniz- 
ing prayers from those to whom they had been for 
years as eyes to the blind, as feet to the lame, as 
fathers to the poor. 

We now ask, What is needed in the hidden man 
of the heart ? First of all, you need your own pro- 
found self-respect, — respect, not for what you say, 
or believe, or do, but for what you are. Do not 
think that I am speaking non-religiously in naming 
this as the prime requisite. On the other hand, it 
is the most religious thing that I can say ; for I can 
make nothing of conscience except as God with 
and in me ; and if I can only pronounce myself 
worthy of honor, it is not I that say it, — it is God 
w r ho says it in me. It is mere vanity that is in- 
flated, not conscience that is satisfied, by ritual ob- 
servance, or by rigid and uncompromising ortho- 
doxy, or by the outside work of Christian charity. 
But what I mean to say is that with thorough and 



THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEART. 209 



unsparing self-scrutiny you should probe the depths 
of your inmost being, and should tolerate in your- 
self nothing short of a condition of soul which, 
could it be laid open to you in a fellow-man, would 
have your entire and hearty approval, esteem, and 
love. 

Undue stress is sometimes laid on what is called 
the conviction of sin, which a man may easily have, 
and yet take little pains to get rid of it, if he can 
only lay hold on some dogmatic figment by which 
he hopes to elude its penalty. This is a matter 
about which you need not trouble yourselves. The 
conviction of sin comes surely enough and fast 
enough when you have the perfect ideal before you, 
and are striving to realize it. But I would rather 
have you aim at the conviction of righteousness, 
that is, of rightness, — of a heart right before God. 
I would have you regard impurity, falsity, dis- 
honesty, selfishness, meanness, not in conduct, but 
in thought, feeling, desire, impulse, tendency, with 
just the same shrinking and loathing of the soul, 
as you would have in your bodily consciousness — 
if I may use the term — for a ditch full of the 
most nauseous filth. I would have you feel as if 
not only yielding to any temptation to overt guilt, 
but suffering the mind to brood upon it, or tolerat- 
ing its suggestion by others, were to the soul what 
a deliberate plunge into the foulness of a sewer or 



'210 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

a cesspool would be to the body. With this feel- 
ing you are safe. But you are not so, if you think 
with complacency on the wrong which you w r ould 
not do ; for thence come those first trespasses just 
over the border-line of right, or soberness, or pur- 
ity, in which, without meaning it, you really change 
sides, set yourself an example which you are almost 
sure to follow and to exceed, and are not impro- 
bably signing your own spiritual death-warrant. 

But the horror of evil of which I speak is not 
negative, nor yet is your dread of what is foul and 
offensive to the bodily sense merely negative. 
There are men who do not shrink from defilements 
of body that would seem to you utterly intolerable. 
There are those whom the necessities of their occu- 
pation have forced to overcome such feelings ; there 
are those of so coarse a nature that they never had 
them to be overcome. You, however, shrink from 
such pollution because you have a positive love for 
cleanness, neatness, elegance, because you esteem 
them in others, and delight in them in yourselves. 
In like manner, your abhorrence of moral evil 
must be merely the negative of your sincere and 
earnest esteem and love for integrity, purity, and 
holiness. 

I have made this morning, in the responsive read- 
ing and for the first lesson, a double use of the one 
hundred and nineteenth Psalm, monotonous as it 



THE HIDDEX MAX OF THE HEART. 211 



seems, because there is an unsurpassed charm in 
monotony on so high a key. It is precisely the 
monotony, always the same, yet ever varied, fresh 
and new, that ought to be the unceasing rhythm in 
the hidden man of your hearts and of mine. Strike 
into that Psalm no matter where, you have, with 
no little diversity of phrase, the one pervading sen- 
timent, "Oh how love I thy law!" "Thy testi- 
monies are my delight." " How sweet are thy 
words unto my taste ! " There is no knowing who 
could have written it. David certainly could not. 
It must have come from some Hebrew antetype of 
Fenelon or of William Law. Excuse this digres- 
sion. 

What you need within is not preference or ap- 
proval, but such a love for what is in itself pure, 
right, and good that you want to make it your 
atmosphere, and cannot conceive of comfortable 
living in any other atmosphere. 

But do I address any one who, even in a single 
instance or in any appreciable degree, has con- 
tracted the stain of overt guilt ? It is of no use 
for you merely to regret what has taken place, still 
less, to comfort yourself in the thought that you 
have not gone far out of the way, that though you 
have tasted the cup, you have not drunk deep. 
Think slightly of the matter, and the occasion will 
not long be wanting, on which you will go farther 



212 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



and drink deeper. Your only safety lies in your 
being shudderingly aware of the intrinsic vileness 
of what you have begun, I will not say to do, but 
of what you have begun to be, and in your having 
even a profounder horror of the wrong or evil than 
if your soul had not been smeared with its pitchy 
foulness. Slight, formal, perfunctory repentance 
is worse than none ; for it invites a false security. 
The only penitence worth feeling is that of utter 
abhorrence, of loathing with the whole soul for 
that which is to be repented of, and of self-abhor- 
rence and self-loathing for having been guilty of it. 

But you may ask, Is not this pure condition of 
the inward man beyond human capacity ? I an- 
swer, first, that to strive for it is not beyond your 
capacity, — that this is the one ideal which you 
ought to keep, and can keep, continually before 
you, the goal toward which you must make constant 
progress, the foremost aim toward which your en- 
deavor must be ever more and more successful at- 
tainment ; and, secondly, that I by no means suppose 
that one can attain and be all this without help 
from God, which, however, you can always have 
for the asking. I believe in the efficacy of prayer. 
It contains its own answer. The very lifting of 
thought, desire, and affection to God purines while 
it exalts. It is impossible to bring God and moral 
evil into your mind at the same time, except it be 



THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEART. 213 



with abhorrence or with penitence for the evil. 
Yet more, prayer is communion, — not mere con- 
verse, but partaking. You cannot be intimate with 
a fellow-man both pure and strong without find- 
ing your own being in some measure clarified and 
invigorated by the intercourse. Still less can 
you commune with Perfect Holiness as dwelling in 
Omniscient Wisdom and Omnipotent Love without 
the inflow of the spirit of power and of love and of 
a sound mind into your own souls. By prayer, 
however, I mean something more than the mere 
form or words of devotion. I mean the breathing 
forth of the desires and aspirations of the soul as 
to him who welcomes and seconds them with all 
the fullness of a Father's love. 

But you can even more than pray, or rather, you 
can make your life, in its work and its play, in its 
gladness and its grief, in its lonely and its social 
hours, an unintermitting prayer. The phrase 
" walking with God " had its significance in early 
time ; but it has a fuller and richer meaning now. 
All of the Divine that is communicable is placed 
before you in Jesus Christ, and you can walk with 
him as a younger with an elder brother, drinking 
in from the sacred record the sweetness, loveliness, 
beauty of his holiness, and thus shaping a Christ 
within that shall be your safeguard, your strength, 
and your joy. This is the highest work that can 



214 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

be done for the soul, and it is in this that Christ is 
preeminently the Saviour of men ; for sin is the 
only thing that man needs to be saved from. 

The habit in the Christian Church of making 
the atonement a subject of discussion and contro- 
versy has been of immeasurable harm in shutting 
off from men's minds Christ's supreme office as 
teacher, exemplar, and guide of souls, which, unless 
he be, they can get no good from him. The apos- 
tles would just as soon have thought of inquiring 
what part the mother has in the birth, nurture, 
and training of her child, as what part Christ bears 
in the salvation of man. They thought of him as 
the all-in-all, — God in him, to be sure, as God is 
in the mother. But the two condemnable heresies 
about Christ in our time are, on the one hand, rep- 
resenting him as appeasing the wrath instead of 
incarnating the immeasurable love of God, and on 
the other hand, maintaining any dogma of the 
atonement narrower than that of St. Paul, when he 
writes, " Jesus Christ, who of God is made unto us 
wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and 
redemption." 

To sum up in a single sentence what I would 
comprehend in the hidden man of the heart, I 
would say that it is a character which, because 
your own conscience approves it, you know must 
be regarded with esteem, honor, and love by him 



THE HIDDEN MAN OF THE HEABT. 



215 



who alone voices your conscience, — a character 
which can be fed only by communion with God, 
and is sustained by a close and ever closer follow- 
ing of Christ, — a character which he who has it 
not, needs, not only that he may enter with trust 
and hope on the life beyond death, but equally 
that he may meet and overcome the earthly tempta- 
tions which he may have to encounter in their full 
strength, and to which, in such case, without this 
character he is as sure to yield, though it be to his 
irretrievable shame and ruin, as he is to burn his 
hand if he thrusts it into the fire. 

But why " the hidden man of the heart 99 ? In 
our text the word " hidden " is used in contrast with 
the " outward adorning " which the writer depre- 
cates. But it is a good word in itself, as designating 
one aspect of a thoroughly religious character. It 
is hidden, because it makes no show of itself, no 
ostentatious profession. Religionists of an inferior 
type, like some of the lower orders of zoophytes, 
have a facility of turning themselves inside out ; 
but he who does this has little within him that is 
worth showing. Sincere godliness is hidden as the 
root of the tree is hidden. The deeper the root, 
the richer are the blossoming and the fruitage. So, 
too, the more profound and intimate is the soul of 
goodness, the more radiantly beautiful, and the 
more full of kindness and benignity is the outward 



216 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

life. Thus the hidden man of the heart becomes 
an open secret, known and read of all ; for you 
can do nothing for yourselves in the depth of 
your profoundest spiritual receptivity, which has 
not its full counterpart in the purity, gentleness, 
simplicity, integrity, beneficence, holiness of your 
outward life, so that while you seek praise from 
God alone, it will be impossible that men will not 
say of you on earth what angels will one day say 
in heaven, " These are they which follow the Lamb 
whithersoever he goeth, redeemed from among men. 
And in their mouth was found no guile ; for they 
are without fault before the throne of God." 



SERMON XVIII. 



HEAVEN OPEN. 
" Ye shall see heaven open." — John i. 51. 

Theee are many ways into the kingdom of hea- 
ven, and those who lay stress on one way are in 
the right, except when they make theirs the only 
way, There are many comprehensive definitions 
of Christianity, and those who lay stress on one of 
them are in the right, except when they make theirs 
the only definition. Christianity sanctions divers 
ways and admits of divers definitions, not because 
it is vague, but because it is broad, with openings 
from every avenue by which the lowly, yearning 
soul can approach it, and yielding with prompt 
elasticity to every mould in which it can fit into an 
honest mind and a loving heart. Among these 
definitions I cannot but lay intense emphasis on 
the one suggested in my text : " Ye shall see 
heaven open." I do not believe that Jesus in these 
words referred to any special manifestations of 
heaven ; for none are reported or hinted at in this 
connection. But he defined what was going to be 
the experience of his disciples, as it was his own 



218 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



conscious experience. His aim was to place them 
where he stood, to give them the open vision of 
heaven in which he dwelt, and through them to 
transmit the vision to all coming time, that his 
disciples in every age might sit in heavenly places. 
Christianity may thus be denned — not thereby ex- 
cluding other definitions, but comprehending them 
all — as the revelation of the open heaven, of the 
realm of spiritual being. — the rending away of 
the separating veil, the making of the two worlds 
one world. 

Jesus with literal truth calls himself, while still 
dwelling on the earth. " the Son of man who is in 
heaven."' The narrative of the Transfiguration 
gives but the type of his incessant communion with 
the Unseen. He ever speaks of the Father, not 
as believing, but as feeling his presence. He talks 
to his disciples of his own presence with them, 
after he shall have left this world, to the end of 
time. The very phrase by which he designates, not 
a future condition of being, but his Church here 
and now, the kingdom or reign of heaven, indicates 
its government by the felt power, not of the world 
to come, but of that ever-present world which we 
thus misname. The regeneration of his immediate 
followers was no mystic process like that which 
creeds in vain attempt to portray, but birth into 
this kingdom of heaven, — into a spiritual con- 
sciousness like their Master's. 



HEAVEN OPEN. 



219 



This was the condition of Christians in the mar- 
tyr-age. Their daily work was wrought, their con- 
flicts waged, their trials borne, as with the fellow- 
ship and sympathy of the cloud of heavenly wit- 
nesses. When they broke the sacramental bread 
and poured the cup of blessing, they inly felt the 
real presence of their Lord, not in the wafer or the 
wine, but far closer and more intimately, as soul 
communing with kindred souls, as heart beating in 
unison with responsive hearts. They deemed them- 
selves citizens of the heavenly city, while compelled 
to live as strangers and pilgrims here. Their 
writings, their utterances on the cross and at the 
stake, their entire life-record, attest this double, 
interbraicled consciousness. So clear was the tran- 
scendental vision of the soul that, if merely sub- 
jective, it seemed to them objective, painted on the 
retina of the fleshly eye, so that to many other 
saints, as to Stephen, the heavens were opened and 
they saw Jesus standing on the right hand of God. 

But when Christianity mounted the throne of 
the Caesars, and the bishops became courtiers and 
the Church a temporal sovereignty, there was no 
longer open vision, and what had been seen with 
the inward eye died out of men's hearts, yet with- 
out being expunged from their creeds. What had 
been vivid experiences were compressed into narrow 
dogmas, and frozen into ritual observances. Hence 



220 



KING'S CHAPEL SEE HONS. 



transubstantiation, formal prayers to the Madonna, 
angels, and saints, prayers and masses for the dead, 
the coining: of the merits of righteous souls in 
heaven into pardons and indulgences for sinners on 
the earth; in fine, the erecting of the Church into 
a bureau for mercenary transactions between this 
world and the world beyond. These dry bones of 
what had been a living faith the Protestant Ee- 
formation did not attempt to clothe with flesh and 
to inspire with vital breath, but recoiled to the op- 
posite extreme. They hung again the veil between 
the two worlds, relegated the Holy Spirit to the 
apostolic age or to special seasons of outpouring at 
doubtful intervals, postponed heaven and hell till 
after death, and generally till after a grand day of 
final assizes, and cut in sunder the bonds of con- 
scious fellowship and mutual intercession between 
those living on the earth and those more truly 
living in the inner courts of the Father's house. 

The more spiritual of the Eomanists. while not 
spurning, transcend the forms of their church, 
revert lovingly to the spiritual consciousness of 
which these forms are the vestiges, behold in sight- 
like faith the unseen witnesses, blend their prayers 
and praises with the worship of the heavenly host, 
and regard heaven and earth as but different apart- 
ments of the same house of God, in which from 
room to room are doors and avenues for mutual 



HEAVEN OPEN. 



221 



sympathy, intercession, and thanksgiving. The 
consequence is that the biography and literature of 
the Roman Church are preeminently rich in exam- 
ple, meditation, precept, and aspiration appertain- 
ing to the interior life ; and while one cannot 
sojourn long in any Roman Catholic country, least 
of all in Rome, without seeing the type of the 
Roman Church in Nebuchadnezzar's vision of the 
image, part of gold, a much larger part of miry 
clay, the noisome squalidness of the clay only 
enhances the pure lustre of the gold. 

Our supreme religious need is that we too re- 
turn to the early Christian faith in things spirit- 
ual as not remote, or past, or future, but as pre- 
sent and ever-present realities. Chief of all, we 
need to feel the unceasing presence of God, not 
merely as the Sustainer of the visible universe, 
but as unspeakably near to the individual soul. 
In the technical language of the pulpit and the re- 
ligious press we often hear or read of the absence or 
withholding of the Holy Spirit. The very thought, 
I have no doubt, is among the chief means of 
producing the state of feeling that is meant by it ; 
that is, of shutting men's hearts against the hea- 
venly voice and vision, — in the apostolic language, 
of grieving and quenching the Spirit. " Behold, I 
stand at the door and knock," is the word of God to 
every human soul, under whatever culture. There is 



222 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

no heart of man, whether in or out of Christendom, 
that cannot so obey the divine call as to be led to the 
highest and best within its reach. The knock at the 
door we cannot help hearing, indeed, after some 
sort ; for who is there that acquiesces in evil or in 
inferior good, who is not distinctly aware of his, 
moral position and tendency ? We succumb to the 
evil or rest in the lower good because we in 
thought isolate ourselves, consider this knocking 
at the door as a mere movement of our own minds, 
regard ourselves as the sole party in the moral 
questions at issue, attach no superior authority to 
one class of impulses over the other, and thus yield 
to that which desire, passion, appetite, or mere 
indolence renders for the time importunate and 
urgent. What we need to feel is not the knocking 
at the door, but its personality. "Behold, I stand 
at the door, — I, thy Father, I who love thee with 
an everlasting love, I who yearn for thy deliverance 
from evil, I who would make thee wholly and for- 
ever mine." The inexorable conscience, the sense 
of the absolute and eternal right, prior to experi- 
ence, waking with the very dawn of self-conscious- 
ness, in the maturity of its strength while all other 
powers of the inner man are still in their infancy, 
eludes scientific explanation, transcends the sphere 
of physical and finite causes, and not in mere 
rhetorical figure, but in the last analysis of philos- 



HEAVEN OPEN. 



223 



ophy no less than in the Christian faith, is the 
God within, the witness to the soul of the Infinite 
Presence, and of the yearning love which that 
Presence is. Did we feel this as we say it, where 
were our sins or our power of sinning ? Do you 
suppose that man is capable of direct disobedience 
or non-obedience in the very face of God? Can 
you conceive of aught else than loyal duty and 
service when the soul says within itself, " Thou, 
God, seest me, and in the wrong that I do I offend 
and grieve the Father Spirit, — the Heart that 
beneath the burden of a sentient universe yet 
throbs for me ? " 

In regard to the consequences of wrong-doing 
there is intense need of replacing the doubtful and 
distant future by a present, an immediate retribu- 
tion ; continuous, indeed, but not deferred. Future 
punishment, with the material horrors associated 
with it, has undoubtedly had no little efficacy in 
holding and drawing back human souls from immi- 
nent perdition. But it has ruined more souls than 
it has saved ; for a sentence held in suspense al- 
ways suggests the hope of evading it. There is 
always the possibility of repentance and escape. 
Death may be far away, a prolonged life may fur- 
nish ample space for pleasurable sin, and the long 
score of transgressions may be wiped clean at 
the eleventh hour, though in point of fact our 



224 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

Lord's parable expressly excludes the eleventh-hour 
penitent, the point of the parable being that those 
called late as well as those called early obey the 
call as soon as it reaches them. Far be it from me 
to speak lightly of the consequences of moral evil. 
But they do not linger. The Nemesis treads close 
on the heels of the wrong-doing, and is intensified 
with every new transgression ; and in no respect is 
this so emphatically true as in that which ought to 
shed an almost hopeless doubt and rayless gloom 
on postponed goodness and late repentance, namely, 
in the law of self-propagation, which belongs to 
moral evil as to good, so that sin finds its surest 
and most baleful penalty in repeated, continued, 
enhanced, indurated guilt, in an ever feebler capa- 
city of self-recovery, in a condition in which even 
the delirious ecstasies which sometimes terminate 
a profligate life can have no hopeful meaning, 
can indicate no change of character. Indeed, were 
we to assume the geocentric position of inflexible 
law, the tendency of moral evil here would preclude 
all hope for the willingly and persistently guilty. 
But from the heliocentric position of the infinite 
love of God, which ought to be the Christian's only 
standpoint, we cannot but believe that the Divine 
Shepherd will bring back the strayling to the fold, 
though it be after such fearful experience of the 
evil and bitterness of sin as is foreshadowed by the 



HEAVEN OPEN, 



225 



intensest utterances of warning and of woe that 
ever fell from any lips but those of the merciful 
Saviour. 

Yet to preclude or arrest the wandering from 
the right and good, I believe that no terror can 
have a tithe of the beneficent influence that would 
flow from a sense of the open heaven. Words- 
worth's verse, 

" Heaven lies about us in our infancy," 

represents what ought to be rather than what often 
is ; and if it were true, I doubt whether the " shades 
of the prison-house " would close over our maturer 
years so frequently and so utterly as they do now. 
As a restraining, guiding, and hallowing power, 
next to the sense of a present God, and making 
that sense more vivid and realizing, is the sense, 
which may be trained almost into a consciousness, 
of the bonds of kindred and of love unsundered by 
death, — of earth-born, home-born angels who crave 
for the fullness of their joy that the spiritual kin- 
ship be not severed, that those of the circle who 
remain below bear equal pace with them in purity 
and holiness, in the faithful service of God and 
man. This sacred fellowship, once established, 
leads on and up through the successive ranks of 
the heavenly hierarchy, and is second to none of 
the modes by which we may reach the spiritual 
estate implied in St. John's words, "Truly our 



226 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son 
Jesus Christ." 

Were this the pervading sentiment, instead of 
the flaming sword, the youth in his time of sore 
temptation would see the sainted forms of the in- 
nocent and holy dead, of the mother whose prayers 
consecrated his cradle, of brother or sister called 
to the higher home before there was any stain of 
earthiness, of those who bore to his early vision 
the prestige of superior excellence, barring for him 
the way to the brief paradise of sinful indulgence, 
or foremost in the joy of heaven when he averts 
his steps from the path of the transgressors. 

Not only as regards the doom of the ungodly, 
equally as to the happiness consequent on a pure, 
holy, and loving life we need to replace the future 
by the present. It has been not unusual to repre- 
sent the Christian life as one of constant toil and 
self-sacrifice, endured less for the love of it than 
for the hope of ultimate reward ; and no small pro- 
portion of Christian hymnology is on the minor 
key, in strains of self-pity while this life lasts, and 
self-congratulation that it will not last always or 
long. From holy writ have been borrowed not the 
notes of perpetual gladness that give tone to St. 
Paul's writings even when he is in the grasp of 
Nero and in expectation of the most cruel type of 
martyrdom* but rather certain descriptions of the 



HEA VEN OPEN. 



227 



merely outward condition of Christians when it 
was their lot to " die daily." I have often heard 
it intimated, though not said in so many words, 
that God is a hard taskmaster, whom no one would 
want to obey or serve were this life the whole of 
being. It is, indeed, our unutterable joy that in 
Jesus Christ immortality is brought into a self- 
evidencing light ; yet were it not so, I cannot but 
believe that goodness is its own sufficient reward, 
and I doubt not that it is so in the consciousness 
of the very Christians who say and sing to the 
contrary because they think that they ought to. 

Moreover, next to the revelation of immortality 
through Christ, there is no evidence of eternal life 
so clear and strong as the interior consciousness of 
those who, through faith working by love, have 
passed into a life that in its peace and gladness 
beams luminously above the shadow and spurns the 
very thought of death. Not only is the conscious- 
ness of well-being and right-doing in the sight of 
God the very summit of earthly happiness ; it is 
so utterly impossible for us to conceive of anything 
higher as to be the only ideal of heaven on which 
we can rest. When the writer of the Apocalypse 
heaps splendor upon splendor, and piles up all that 
the world has most magnificent, luxurious, and 
appetizing, to symbolize the new Jerusalem, how 
mean and paltry does it all look as compared with 



228 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount ! Who 
would not trample the gold and diamonds and 
shining robes and starry crown under foot, to be 
the worthy subject of those blessings on the poor 
in spirit, the pure in heart, the merciful, the peace- 
makers ? So far as these rest upon us, ours is not 
a future, far-off heaven, but a heaven begun, a hea- 
ven the staple, the material of which does not ad- 
mit of being made better except so far as our souls 
grow more pure and holy, — a heaven which no 
earthly condition can render less radiant and bliss- 
ful, though there may be, independently of it and as 
in an outer consciousness, pain, suffering, and grief, 
from which in God's good time we shall be glad to 
be relieved, yet which through the alchemy of a liv- 
ing faith feed and enhance the heaven within, so 
that St. Paul's antithesis, " sorrowing, yet always 
rejoicing," becomes a synthesis in Christian expe- 
rience, and the deeper the sorrow the richer the 

joy- 
But in proportion as this heaven on earth be- 
comes ours, the heaven above is, or ought to be, 
open to us. While on the one hand we have no 
ground for formulating express beliefs as to kinds, 
ways, and degrees of intercourse between heaven 
and earth, of which we can have no clear knowledge 
till we cross the separating stream, on the other 
hand we cannot believe that love dies in the hearts 



HEAVEN OPEN, 



229 



of those who go from us while it lives in ours ; and 
certainly the whole tone and spirit of our Saviour's 
teaching would cherish in us a felt communion 
which cannot but have its counterpart with them. 
Among all the liturgies of the Christian Church, 
there can be found no prayer more redolent of 
the spirit of our Lord than that which the 
Moravians offer in their cemeteries at sunrise on 
Easter morning, 44 Keep us in everlasting fellow- 
ship with our brethren and sisters who have entered 
into the joy of their Lord, with those whom thou 
hast called home in the past year, and with the 
whole Church triumphant," Be this our prayer. 
May the thought of the intercessions that go up 
for us from those whose voices we shall hear no more 
on earth quicken our steps on the path on which 
they went home to God, and render the fellowship 
on our part as true and perfect as it is in their 
wish and prayer for us, and may the blessing of 
him in whom the whole family in heaven and on 
earth is made one be ours forevermore I 



SERMON XIX. 



AUTUMN. 

" We all do fade as a leaf.'' — Isaiah lxiv. 6. 

To the prophet, no image could have seemed 

more sad than this. In the old world, there is 

nothing beautiful in the retreating life of the for- 
es o 

est, in the waning glory of the year. The leaf 
borrows no new tints of heavenly glow, but puts 
on only a sodden, earthy hue that seeins typical of 
decay and dissolution. Such was the aspect of hu- 
man life when all that man knew of it was com- 
prised in the formula, " Dust to dust." In the 
time of Isaiah there may have been some dim and 
feeble apprehension, but no sure hope, of immor- 
tality. The prevalent feeling of the most devout 
men was grateful acquiescence in the Providence 
which, while making man's days as a hand's-breadth, 
had yet known how to crowd them with deliver- 
ances and blessings without number, — not by any 
means the faith expressed by a Hebrew some cen- 
turies later, " God created man to be immortal, 
and made him to be an image of his own eternity.' 5 



AUTUMN. 



231 



With us Nature puts on her singing robes to die. 
The leaf fades from beauty into glory. Our for- 
ests are like the bush on Horeb, burning, yet un- 
consumed. Tree differs from tree, as star from 
star ; all resplendent, yet each with its own peculiar 
lustre. There is more of transfiguration than of 
decay. In these still, bright days, while winter 
lingers in the background, the leaves become mere 
skeletons before they fall, and have exhaled into 
the upper air more of their substance than will 
drop to the ground. 

Have we not here the type of what the fading 
leaves of human life ought to be, under the light 
of the life eternal ? 

We all do fade as a leaf, and many of the leaves 
on our life-tree wither before the summer is over. 
In some respects we pass our prime before, in 
others, we reach it. After middle life, though we 
may gain, we lose ; and by a mere earthly valua- 
tion we lose more than we gain. There remain 
few first experiences in any department of life. 
The freshness of our joy has passed away. Our 
ambitions have been brought within a narrower 
scope. There have been some utter disappoint- 
ments, and they, even in a successful career, make 
themselves permanently felt ; for we know that 
what once seemed within our reach is now forever 
unattainable. Very many of what were once en- 



232 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

joyruents have lost their zest. There remains less 
revenue to be had from this world than we have 
already had. Gradually at first, then very fast, 
the horizon contracts to our view, till for the inter- 
minable vista that used to open before us, the lu- 
minous mist over it only making it more gorgeous 
and attractive, we have a brief space lying under a 
deep shadow, shut in by the death-river. 

Meanwhile our standing ground is cut from be- 
neath us by the eager on-rush of a younger genera- 
tion, who crowd into our places before we are pre- 
pared to leave them. 

In fine, in an earthly point of view, there must 
be a continuous fading of what rendered life most 
enjoyable and hopeful, and, chief of all, in the pass- 
ing away of so many that were unspeakably pre- 
cious to us whom new friends cannot replace. All 
this is the more sad because in the capacity and 
yearning for enjoyment there is no decline, — nay, 
there is even growth ; for it is not the true life 
that wanes, but only its earthly resources, which 
may be all that it has ever sought to feed upon. 

But it is ours, if we will, to make the fading leaf 
more beautiful than ever before, and autumn more 
full of loveliness and rich promise than spring or 
summer. Under the clear shining of an undying 
hope, life may culminate as it seems to decline, and 
glow with a more resplendent radiance as it nears 



AUTUMN. 



233 



the portal of immortality. There are elements of 
character that need the early frost to mature them 
into beauty ; the disappointments and bereavements 
that one has encountered long before he bears the 
marks of venerable age are almost essential to the 
ripeness of the religious character. One never 
feels fully the need and worth of faith in things 
unseen and eternal till he has been made pro- 
foundly sensible of the frailty of all beside. There 
may indeed be vigorous principle, faithful duty, 
the earnest service of God and man ; and this is the 
best part of religion, without which all the rest is 
worthless. But with the experiences of which I 
speak there comes in a tenderness of spirit, a power 
of communion with the unseen, a consciousness of 
continued fellowship with those who have passed 
on before us and with all that belongs to the spir- 
itual world, a more distinctly heavenward aim and 
aspiration, a life that feels itself appertaining 
equally to the two worlds, and has its fading leaf 
tinged with hues caught from its familiar conver- 
sance with a higher sphere of being. 

Though there is no trait of excellence which is 
forbidden to any, or is out of place in any age or 
condition, the ages as well as the estates of life 
have their special virtues. While the leaves are 
still green on the life-tree the active powers demand 
peculiar culture, and need to be energized by the 



234 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



strenuous purpose of right, and by an aggressive 
spirit of conflict with every form of wrong and 
evil. The character may thus have its hopeful 
birth and growth, yet may not be filled in and 
rounded out with all that shall make it seem very 
near perfection. It may have the strength, but 
perhaps not yet the finished beauty of holiness. 
This, if not acquired before, must tint the leaves 
as they are beginning to fade, and may take on 
golden hues to replace the summer green. Gen- 
tleness, meekness, love-born courtesy, forbearance 
and long-suffering, the sense of spiritual reali- 
ties that infuses itself into all scenes and objects, 
making common life sacred, common duties like 
an altar service, common enjoyments a perpetual 
thanksgiving, the delicate tracery which runs along 
with the thread of the daily life and gives a charm 
to what were else devoid of interest, — these, to be 
spurned by none, ought to be the ornament, the 
diadem, the crown of glory for the declining years, 
shedding over them the light of the resurrection 
morning and the unsetting sun, making the life 
seem incapable of dying, and giving more and 
more the consciousness of having already passed 
from death into life. If, then, with growing years 
we feel the fading of the leaf, a diminished power 
of active w T ork, a loosened hold on the wonted ob- 
jects of endeavor and ambition, we have here a 



AUTUMN. 



235 



scope for activity no less vigorous and faithful than 
that of our youth or our prime, — one, too, in which 
we may do no less loyal and needful service to the 
world around us; for never did society need as 
now the example, the infusion of these gentler ele- 
ments of character, to temper its fervid haste, to 
tone down its asperities, and to intenerate its hard- 
ness. Such ministries we have seen not infre- 
quently among those who have wholly retired from 
the heat and burden of the day, yet have filled a 
no less conspicuous place and borne a no less essen- 
tial part in the common life-work than when they 
were among the foremost in the career of honorable 
ambition. 

Even under the heaviest burden of infirmity and 
suffering, there may be in the fading leaf only the 
richer glory. Patience and resignation, the peace 
of God and the clear vision of heaven, illumine 
many a chamber of chronic illness, many a couch 
of perpetual weariness and languishing. There 
are those who were never so lovely in the fullness 
of a God-inspired strength and unresting diligence 
as when they can only wait and suffer. Faith is 
never so queenly, hope never so sightlike, the 
Christian spirit never so rich in its every aspect 
and issue, as when the heavy hand of a mysterious 
Providence rests on one who had been true to the 
demands of active service, had taken for his watch- 



236 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



word, " Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth," and 
still hearing the same voice, responds ; — 

" Cast as a broken vessel by, 
Thy will I can no longer do ; 
Yet, while a daily death I die, 
Thy power I may in weakness show. 
My patience may thy glory raise, 
My speechless woe proclaim thy praise." 

While some of the strongest spirits are thus dis- 
ciplined, there are souls that never seem truly 
great till such trials are laid upon them. I have 
known those who had no conspicuous opportunities, 
— if they had had them, they might have been un- 
equal to them, — those whose uneventful, prosaic 
walk commanded no stress of interest, — one knew 
that they were true and good, but their characters 
bore no strong marks and made no deep impres- 
sion, — I have known such persons, who, when vis- 
ited with prolonged infirmity, and under the shadow 
of impending death, have manifested a surpassing 
energy of spirit. Their lips, before sealed except 
to communings of no emphatic meaning, have been 
opened to the utterance of high spiritual thought, 
of fervent praise, of ecstatic hope. They have 
risen to the emergency ; they have felt the throb- 
bings of an immortal life beneath the dying flesh ; 
they have watched the ebbing life-tide, have fore- 
seen the close as it drew near, and met the final 



AUTUMN, 



237 



call as with girded loins, knowing in whom they 
have believed, and assured that death cannot sepa- 
rate them from the love of God as revealed in the 
risen Redeemer. Such souls are witnesses for the 
faith they love. They strengthen the timid and 
the doubting. They diffuse a profound and vivid 
sense of the reality of the higher life, of the omni- 
potence of the gospel, of the certainty of its pro- 
mises, of the Almighty arm beneath the sufferer, of 
the sufficiency of God's grace for the soul's sever- 
est stress and deepest need. 

Others there are who first learn the blessedness 
of a religious trust when the leaf begins to fade. 
They have led, it may be, a not discreditable 
worldly life ; but they have been so busy and care- 
cumbered, or so imbedded in ease and affluence, 
that they have hardly lifted a thought Godward or 
heavenward. But the early frost has touched the 
green branch, and they know for a certainty that 
it will never be green again. Shall its leaves 
merely wither and fall, or shall they clothe them- 
selves in colors borrowed from the bow of heaven, 
which will not fade, but will bloom and glow into 
immortality ? There are those in whom the check 
on the earthly life awakens every precious memory 
of early faith, recalls a devout mother's teachings, 
revives impressions that had seemed evanescent, 
quickens the dormant sense of a spiritual being, 



238 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

calls forth the sincerest penitence for the years in 
which God has had so small a part, and leads the 
humbled soul to him whose words are, " Him that 
cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." Then the 
fading leaf grows beautiful. The stages of decline 
are rungs of the ladder from earth to heaven, on 
which descending angels meet with messages of 
good cheer the soul that is going home to God. 
Death is no longer the close, but the beginning of 
the career, and the blessings that rested on the 
days of busy and happy health are recalled, not 
with sorrow that they have ceased to be, but as 
tokens of a Love that will be with its child as he 
passes through the valley of the shadow of death, 
and pledges that he shall dwell in the house of God 
forever. 

What I have said has not been merely an 
adaptation to the service of the sanctuary of the 
glory that covers the retreat of life from field and 
forest. I have used this retreating life to group 
around it what I have seen and known of what 
seem the darkest, yet are often the brightest por- 
tions of human experience. For many years of 
my life I was in constant conversance with such 
experiences, nor have I at any time been a stranger 
to them. There have been not a few whom I have 
been wont to see in suffering which death alone 
could terminate, yet have seen them only with a 



AUTUMN. 



239 



conviction borne in npon me by my intercourse 
with them, which had no room to grow stronger, of 
the power of the world to come, of the sure foun- 
dation of those hopes that lay hold on eternity, of 
the presence of an Almighty Comforter, of the ful- 
fillment of the promise of Jesus, " My peace I give 
unto you." That God is good we feel when every- 
thing smiles around and before us. Even more 
loudly does the echo ring from the scenes in which 
men cling to him as the All-in-all, and know that 
he is with them in the furnace of severest trial, — 
that, as the old prophet says, he " sits as a refiner 
and purifier of silver," and watches to see his own 
image mirrored from the metal's quivering sur- 
face. 

TVe all do fade as a leaf, earlier or later, — 
some while the summer still lingers, some in the 
late frost of impending winter. But, through the 
vigor of an immortal hope, we need not wither in 
inglorious decline, but in the colors of the crimson 
dawn, which shall grow ever brighter till they are 
merged in the risen and perfect day. 



SEEMON XX, 



THE ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 

"More in number than the sands of the sea." — Ps. exxxix. 18. 

Did it ever occur to you how absolutely num- 
berless must have been the patterns of all fabrics 
of human art and skill, — carpets, room-papers, 
prints, porcelain, details of finish in furniture, 
fashions of jewelry ? Every year brings its ava- 
lanche of novelties, rendering their predecessors 
obsolete, and yet there is no repetition. Go back 
to the first carpet ever woven, or the first calico 
ever printed, and follow the current of invention 
from year to year, — you will find no two styles 
alike except in general effect, and seldom even in 
that ; and should the world last as many centuries 
as it has ]asted years, and should the civilization of 
its latter days demand the same sorts of fabrics 
that we use, invention will be as fresh and unre- 
peatiug as now till the end of time. If you will 
suppose that a pattern-maker has at his command 
four or five different curves and three or four tints, 
the combinations that may be made of some or all 
of these simple elements are, if not literally more 



ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 241 



in number than the sands, more numerous than 
man ever had the patience to calculate or the dar- 
ing to conjecture. Then, too, with every curve or 
tint added to the number employed, the figures 
that would express the number of possible combi- 
nations would be vastly more than the previous 
number. In adding curves or tints, we should in 
a very short time have combinations far beyond 
our outside conception of infinity, — a number 
larger than we can present to our thought by any 
illustration or comparison ; and with the curves 
and tints actually employed, for instance, in a carpet 
that we call unusually plain and simple, the possi- 
ble combinations would very probably exceed the 
sands of the sea in number. 

How easy then, you might say, must be the in- 
ventor's work ! No, not by any means ; for while 
there are uncounted numbers of combinations that 
may please the eye and gratify the taste, there are 
a myriad times as many that are unsightly ; and 
you or I, if untrained, might experiment for cen- 
turies before we would alight on a combination that 
was barely passable. The chances of failure innu- 
merably exceed those of success. All this pattern- 
making is the result, not of good luck, but of ed- 
ucated taste, trained eye, and practiced hand. 

The universe happened out of chaos, say certain 
(so-called) philosophers. In the swirl of eddying 



242 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

atoms, some impinged upon others, until permanent 
pairs, clusters, groups, were formed, which some- 
how blundered into life, and by happy successions 
of chances a portion of them developed higher 
modes of vitality ; by still more happy chances, 
sprang into intelligence, superstition, religion ; and 
at length, by the masterly throw of unloaded dice, 
came the supreme wisdom that can emancipate 
itself from religion and rejoice in a world without 
a God, — this last, as it seems to me, strangest of 
all, against which I should have thought the proba- 
bility billions to one. 

Let us look at this hypothesis of a godless world. 
There are about sixty elementary substances in our 
earth and its atmosphere. "Were you to belt the 
solar system with figures, you could not express 
the number of possible combinations of two or 
more of these elements. But the greater part of 
these combinations would be of elements mutually 
incompatible, neutralizing, or destructive, — many 
of them such as would make extensive havoc where 
there were the beginnings of organic development. 
Suppose these elements fermenting in an ungov- 
erned chaos, the utmost that we can conceive 
would be, here and there, now and then, a combi- 
nation that might seem to have a future, sure, 
however, to be speedily whelmed by or in some 
clustering of uncongenial elements that would only 



ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 243 

restore to chaos what had hardly emerged from its 
abyss, 

But what do we see ? A world stocked with or- 
ganisms and inorganic compounds, each of which, to 
say the least, is as indicative of design as the pat- 
tern of a carpet or a wall-paper, that is, each of 
which has its apparent reason for being, in its capa- 
city of enjoying or giving enjoyment, or in adap- 
tations, relations, or uses which make it a part of 
an orderly whole. Nor do we find any combina- 
tions which look as if they had merely happened, 
— which have no reason for being, no place among 
the rest, no service to receive or to render. In a 
chance world, this last class would vastly outnum- 
ber all the others, if others there were ; for, as I 
have shown, the probabilities of their existence are 
immeasurably greater. But not only are there un- 
numbered individual combinations that seem to 
have a reason for being ; there are very many sys- 
tems of combinations, entire departments of organ- 
ized and inorganic existence, which, without any 
mutual causative relations, fit into one another as 
do the several parts of a skillfully constructed 
machine, supplying one another's deficiencies and 
needs, their very discords resolving themselves into 
staccatos or interludes in the universal harmony. 
In fine, the world is so made that the theory of 
design in the Creator is in accordance with spon- 



244 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

taneous impression and first thought ; and while the 
argument from design has been often misunder- 
stood and illogically employed, in its fitting place 
and use it is out of the power either of sound reason 
or of sophistry to render it worthless, insignificant, 
or feeble. 

Still farther, in the solar system there are many 
identities, proportions, and relations which denote 
a oneness of plan in the structure and motions of 
the planets and their satellites. Gravitation is said 
to account for them ; but gravitation is itself to be 
accounted for. In a chance-made universe, there 
is the intensest improbability that bodies would 
act upon one another at such enormous distances. 
There are also harmonies and analogies in the plan- 
etary system which it is not even pretended that 
gravitation explains, and which therefore either 
happened or were designed. Laplace, a professed 
atheist, admitted that there is some inscrutable 
cause for these phenomena. He subjected them to 
mathematical calculation, and as to forty-three con- 
current motions of planets and satellites, for which 
gravitation furnishes no assignable cause, he made 
the probability of their occurrence by chance to be 
one to four billions four hundred millions. Until 
some other efficient cause is discovered or imagined, 
I must regard these myriads against one as afford- 
ing a strong presumption in behalf of an intelligent 
Creator, 



ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 245 

A like calculus, with similar results, though, of 
course, only with approximate accuracy, has been 
extended to the stellar universe beyond our system, 
to the binary stars, to the drift of stars in space, 
and to the nebulous patches in the heavens. 

In view of these harmonies multiplied beyond 
our count under our familiar view, and extended to 
the outermost bounds of telescopic vision, each of 
them having unnumbered probabilities against it 
in a chance world, even if I had not the faintest 
religious feeling or the feeblest craving for a God, 
my arithmetic and logic would compel me, however 
reluctantly, to believe in a Supreme Intelligence, 
all-wise, omnipotent. I should be an idiot to doubt 
it. Even did I say in my heart, " There is no 
God," my mind would belie my heart, — my reason 
would compel my faith. 

The conception, indeed, of the Being mirrored 
alike in the wayside flower and in the majestic 
courses of the heavens is at best faint, feeble, in- 
adequate, least adequate when most vivid. How, 
then, can we set limits to our gratitude that he has 
shown as much of himself as we can know, in him 
who bears his image in a form human while divine, 
revealed while veiled in a life on the earthly plane 
on which we tread, — in him, at once our brother 
and our Lord, offering himself equally to our fa- 
miliar contemplation and love, and to our adoring 
admiration and reverence ! 



246 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



I have spoken of the numberless probabilities 
against the existence by chance of any individual 
portion of the universal order, and the multiple in- 
finities of chances against any other hypothesis 
than that of the opening words of the Bible, " In 
the beginning God created the heavens and the 
earth." I want now to take an opposite route, and 
in other directions and spheres of thought to show 
certain infinities of combinations that are orderly, 
harmonious, fruitful, and of important bearing on 
human experience in this life and in the life to 
come. 

We are never tired of nature, and how often do 
we feel, in looking on some scene that we call 
familiar, as if we had never seen it before ! In all 
probability we never did see it before. The last 
beautiful autumnal sunset that you saw was as 
unique as it seemed to you. You never saw the 
like. The few lines and tints that made its glory 
were the same that you have often seen ; but they 
are capable of more combinations than will outlast 
the world, and precisely the same has probably 
never presented itself twice since the dawn of cre- 
ation. When I was a young man, I once spent six 
weeks in full view of Mount Washington and its 
allied summits, and every morning, as in a beatific 
vision of a world before unknown, I watched the 
play of wreaths and flecks of mist on the mountain 



ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 247 



sides, and every morning the view was as fresh as 
it was wonderful ; and so would Methuselah have 
found it, had he spent his nine hundred and sixty- 
nine years on the spot. Must not the like ever 
fresh wonder, glowing admiration, fervent gladness 
of soul, be ours in the life to come ? As the mul- 
titude on the sea of glass, with the harps of God, 
sing, " Great and marvelous are thy works, Lord 
God Almighty," it is no traditional song of trea- 
sured beauty and remembered glory, but the out- 
burst of adoration ever new, as the unmeasured 
kaleidoscope of creation flashes upon them combi- 
nations, orders, harmonies, splendors, unknown be- 
fore and never to be repeated. 

Our subject has its fruitful suggestions as to the 
inward life, the life of thought, feeling, and senti- 
ment. The elementary thoughts in every depart- 
ment are comparatively few. If you analyze the 
literature of all times, you may trace the same un- 
derlying ideas and conceptions, simple, obvious, 
perhaps easily numerable. But their combinations 
are virtually infinite in number ; and originality 
consists in new combinations, not in new element- 
ary ideas. It is unexhausted and inexhaustible. 
There is as much of it in the great poets of our 
time as there was in Homer, in the great thinkers 
of our time as in Plato. To be sure, there is 
less of it in our current literature than of old, 



248 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

because formerly only the impulse of genius made 
men authors, while now the existing mass of litera- 
ture invites imitation, makes reproduction easy for 
those incapable of production, tempts mediocrity to 
court an ephemeral reputation by decanting old 
wine into new bottles which soon burst and perish. 
But to the end of time speculation, fancy, and 
poetry will leave in every generation names which 
will survive the ages, float down their current, and 
kindle inspiration as fresh and vivid as when glow- 
ing thoughts first found vent in burning words. 

We have here the key to some of the phenomena 
of the religious life. There have been in all ages 
souls wrapt for years in contemplative devotion. 
There have been lives spent in the cloister, seem- 
ingly in constant and unwearied prayer, praise, in- 
trospection, and meditation on divine mysteries, 
and those who have been most absorbed in such 
themes have been the least weary of them. How 
is this? The elements of religious thought and 
sentiment are few, simple, easily rehearsed, to the 
un devout mind soon exhausted. But their combi- 
nations are manifold, exhaustless. They blend 
with one another in endless variety. They take 
new shapes in connection with the vast range of pre- 
cept, example, and devotional utterance in the Scrip- 
tures, with the ever changing aspects of nature, with 
the ever new incidents of daily life. It is so with 



ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 249 



prayer. He who prays never prays the same 
prayer twice ; but the thoughts of supplication, 
thanksgiving, intercession, so intertwine themselves 
with one another and with fresh experiences that 
they are never repeated without variation, not even 
when there is an identity of form. The ^truly de- 
vout soul becomes attached to a liturgy, not be- 
cause it is always the same, but because it is never 
the same, — because the sacred words bear with 
their repetition accumulated associations of pre- 
vious seasons of prayer and praise, and take up 
into their substance something new from events 
still recent, or from the feeling of the present 
moment. The Lord's Prayer may be repeated 
daily for a lifetime, and, so far from becoming 
vapid, it shall mean more and more every time it 
is used, and may mean very different things, as 
special occasions, needs, infirmities, aspirations, 
give a special emphasis to one or another of the 
petitions. 

Thus must it be in the higher life to come. The 
stereotyped conception of heaven is sometimes sat- 
irized as a perpetual psalm-singing. I believe it 
to be that and immeasurably more. But suppose 
it to be that alone, I can conceive that it need not 
be stale or wearisome. There are even in this 
world materials for a short eternity of lyric wor- 
ship. The canticles of Holy Writ would not be soon 



250 KING'S CHAPEL SERMON S. 

exhausted, and there is not one of them which 
would supersede any other ; and when we had 
given them all their turn, we should only have an 
overflowing treasury of devout thought and feeling 
clustering around each of them, which would make 
us want to sing them again. Then as to the lyrics 
of the Christian ages, if you select those on any 
one theme that are really Christian poems, you 
will find no two of them alike, no one of them with 
which you would be willing to part, no one of them 
which would not awaken a special appetency for its 
own peculiar combination of sacred thought, poeti- 
cal imagery, and hallowed association. I have a 
friend, in whose pure taste and religious feeling I 
have entire confidence, who intends to publish 
this winter a volume of Easter hymns. I doubt 
whether there will be one of them which will not 
present the few simple incidents of the resurrec- 
tion in its own individual grouping, so that the 
volume, narrow as it may seem in its range, shall 
have no repetition, no hymn that shall seem one 
too many ; but each of them will have thoughts, 
incidents, images, that will present the life new- 
born from the sepulchre in its own appropriate 
singing robes, and will wake its own peculiar throb 
of grateful joy in those who love to wait and wor- 
ship at the place where the Lord lay. How must 
this rich diversity of earthly song become immeas- 



ARITHMETICAL LAW OF COMBINATION. 251 



urably richer in the strains that shall echo from 
the harps of the redeemed ! Will it not be, not 
only a new song, but a song ever new, which they 
will sing as they ascribe " blessing and honor and 
glory and power unto him that sitteth upon the 
throne, and unto the Lamb, forever and ever "? 

Then when we blend in our conceptions of the 
higher life eternal praise and everlasting love, with 
the society of the blessed, with the ministries of 
mercy which may be theirs to their fellow-beings in 
God's vast universe, with the ever unfolding yet 
never to be unfolded mysteries of the Infinite Mind, 
can the life of heaven ever grow old, or repeat 
itself ? Or, rather, have we not merely its faintest 
type and its feeblest foreshadowing in the words of 
the seer concerning the heavenly Jerusalem, " In 
the midst of the street thereof and on either side of 
the river was the tree of life, which bare twelve 
manner of fruit and yielded her fruit every month " ? 



SERMON XXL 



CHRISTIANITY AS OLD AS THE CREATION. 

" The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." — Rev. 
xiii. 8. 

About a century and a half ago there appeared 
in England, tinder the name of Matthew Tindal, 
a book entitled " Christianity as Old as the Crea- 
tion ; or, The Gospel a Republication of the Law 
of Nature." The book was regarded as hostile 
to Christianity, and probably was so intended. I 
never saw it, . and know nothing of its contents. 
But I like the title. It expresses precisely what 
I believe Christianity to be. 

A word or two about my text. The authorship 
of the Apocalypse has from early times been a sub- 
ject of grave question. My own belief is that it 
was written by the author of the Fourth Gospel ; 
for, very unlike as the two books are in aim and 
tenor, there are several striking coincidences in 
phraseology and conception. Thus, for instance, 
Jesus is spoken of under the figure of the lamb in 
these two books, and nowhere else in the New Tes- 
tament. In both, the term Logos, or Word, is ap- 



CHRISTIANITY OLD AS CREATION. 253 



plied to Jesus, and nowhere else except in the first 
Epistle commonly ascribed to the same author. 
Moreover, the Fourth Gospel bears such manifest 
traces of having been written by an intimate friend 
of Jesus, who was present in the most important 
scenes which he describes, that I have no doubt 
that it was written by the Apostle John. 

Both the Gospel and the Apocalypse must have 
been written in John's old age, probably many 
years later than the other books of the New Testa- 
ment. He had thus had time which the other writ- 
ers had not, to reflect on Christianity, not only as 
embodied in the teachings of its Founder, but as it 
was taking shape in the belief and life of its dis- 
ciples. In the words of my text and in two or 
three passages in the Gospel, I cannot but think 
that he intended to voice the idea embodied in the 
title of Tindal's book. He means to say : " The 
manifestation of Infinite Love culminating and re- 
splendent in the cross of Christ was nothing new. 
It represented no change in the administration of 
the spiritual universe. God did not then begin to 
be merciful, or begin to forgive sin, or place him- 
self in any relation to man other than that which 
he had always borne. Everything meant or re- 
vealed by the dying Saviour is as old as the world 
is, as old as the throne of God, co-eternal with 
God." 



254 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



On the other hand, Christianity has been often 
represented as a Divine afterthought, consequent 
on sin, a remedy for sin-sick souls, and not the 
vital atmosphere in which all pure and holy souls 
live and move and have their being, and in which 
the life of sin is not only abnormal, but death 
rather than life. It has familiar analogies in the 
realm of science. The circulation of the blood was 
no less a law of life before Harvey discovered it 
than it is now. Gravitation was none the less real 
when the morning stars first sang together than 
since the philosophy of the eighteenth century be- 
gan to write out the rhythm of their song. So there 
is nothing which Jesus taught or manifested which 
is not true from eternity to eternity. 

Another analogy. Scientific truth is revealed 
when men are ready for it ; and of all the great 
truths of science there were foregleams, of all the 
great discoveries forerunners. So the truth taught 
by Christ came, not till, nay, in some respects even 
before, men were ready for it. There was no 
earlier time when religious truth could have been 
propagated, transmitted, and put within reach of 
all the more civilized portion of the human race, 
without multitudinous and continuous miracle. 
Meanwhile there were foreshinings of the true 
light, not in Palestine alone, but in Greece and 
Egypt, Persia and India; there were precursors 



CHRISTIANITY OLD AS CREATION. 255 

of the Messiah, not only in the Hebrew, but equally 
in the Gentile world. 

Let us examine somewhat in detail the contents 
of the Christian revelation, that we may see more 
clearly how veritably they were a revelation, not a 
creation. 

As regards the morality of the Gospel, you can 
name no principle or precept which has not its 
reason and its justification in the eternal right, — 
not one which is not founded on nature, on intrinsic 
fitness, — not one the obligation of which can be 
denied by any intelligent being, — not one which, 
apart from all idea of arbitrary reward or punish- 
ment, can be obeyed without benefit or violated 
with impunity. Wipe out all record and all know- 
ledge of Christianity, and commission a being of 
infallible wisdom to write a code of morals for man- 
kind, he would reproduce the Sermon on the 
Mount ; and if he added to it, it would be such 
traits of transcending excellence as we read more 
distinctly in Christ's life than in his words. Not 
only are the ethics of the Christian code the direc- 
tory for individual men, but equally for communi- 
ties and nations, so that there has been real pro- 
gress only in their direction. Nor is the law of 
Christ for man alone, or for this world alone. 
Heaven can have no other morality ; if it had, it 
would not be heaven. Wherever there are beings 



256 KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS. 

capable of choice and of will, Christ's law must be 
their law, if they would live in peace with one 
another, and would have the testimony of a con- 
science void of offense. 

Most or all of you assent, I doubt not, to what I 
have now said. But when we make peculiar claims 
for Christ, it is alleged, in the first place, that the 
moral principles promulgated by him were not 
brought to light by him, — that there is hardly 
one of his precepts that cannot be found in the 
writings of the Greek, Roman, or Eastern philoso- 
phers, or in the Talmud. This is not, I think, 
quite true, yet it is almost true. Cicero got so far 
toward the precept, 44 Do good to them that hate 
you," as to write, 44 Never injure another unless he 
has first injured you." But admitting in full what 
is claimed for extra-Christian moralists, I would 
reply, If the moral laws which Christ gave are 
laws of nature and as old as the world is, it would 
have been unspeakably strange if they should not 
have been discovered in very early times, and re- 
cognized by wise men all along the ages. The 
peculiarity of Christ is, that he brought them all 
together, so that we find nothing lacking in his 
morality, while at the same time there is nothing 
that ought not to be there. According to the 
Mosaic cosmogony, there was light before the sun, 
errant daybeams, dimly and aimlessly struggling 



CHRISTIANITY OLD AS CREATION. 257 

through, primeval mist and gloom ; but for this 
none the less glorious was the orb which globed 
the scattered fires, and set bounds between the em- 
pire of light and of darkness. 

It is said, in the next place, that we pay scanty- 
homage to the Divine goodness when we maintain 
that this clear knowledge of what human duty must 
always have been was kept back for so many ages. 
I have already said that in one sense it came when 
the world was ready for it. But is there not a 
more important sense in which the world is not 
yet ready for it ? How largely is it received and 
acted on ? Of those who call themselves Christians, 
what proportion is there that show their faith by 
their works? Our business men own Christian 
morality as supreme and divine. Does it really 
give law in the shop, the office, the stock market ? 
Nations call themselves Christian ; but no nation 
has yet begun to adopt the law of Christ in its in- 
tercourse with other nations. We have heard much 
of the Christian character of the venerable em- 
peror of Germany and of his prime minister. Do 
you suppose that Christ would have blessed their 
banners in the Franco-Prussian war, or would re- 
gard the military despotism under which Germany 
is permanently suffering as an institution of his 
school? England calls herself a preeminently 
Christian nation. Did she show herself so when 



258 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



the majority of her prelates voted for the Afghan 
war, in order, as they said, that Christ might re- 
tain his supremacy in the East ? Ours is styled a 
Christian people. Should we be willing to submit 
our claims to that designation to a commission com- 
posed of intelligent Indians and freedmen ? Christ 
came none too late for human receptivity, — none 
too late for the world which will, I believe, at some 
still far-off epoch, be his kingdom, but where as 
yet his real subjects have not begun to win for him 
the ascendency which is his right and due. 

I have spoken of Christian morality as so founded 
in the nature of things that there could have been 
no other morality. Christ could not have created 
a duty which was not of intrinsic right and obliga- 
tion. Even our duty to him of reverence, grati- 
tude, and trust rests on the same basis with our 
duties to other benefactors, self-sacrificing philan- 
thropists, faithful teachers, and wise guides, though 
immeasurably exceeding all that we owe to the 
whole race of man beside, inasmuch as the benefits 
derived from him are our chief, supreme, and eter- 
nal good. 

We turn now to the other end of the chain ; for 
religion, in its true meaning, is binding, tying, or 
chaining, — that which holds God and man to- 
gether. As to God's character and his relation to 
man, Christianity is a revealing or discovering, not 



CHBISTIAXITY OLD AS CREATIOX. 



259 



a creation. The Lamb was slain from the founda- 
tion of the world. There never was a time when 
God was not as full of compassion and mercy, as 
ready to forgive, as Christ's death showed him to 
be. Forgiveness is not a remission of the conse- 
quences of guilt ; for they are natural, necessary, 
inevitable. It is the restoration of the divine ap- 
proval and favor, — not of love ; for that is not 
withdrawn, any more than that of the mother for 
her profligate child. Now forgiveness is intrinsi- 
cally right. We regard it so between man and 
man. A man has injured me. He repents, is 
sincerely sorry, and has toward me an entirely dif- 
ferent disposition from that in which he did me 
wrong. If I do not forgive him, that is, if I con- 
tinue to feel toward him as if there had been no 
change in him, as perhaps I may, it will be solely 
because I am his fellow-sinner ; for it is manifestly 
right that I should regard him, not as he was, but 
as he is. Now because God is perfect, and inca- 
pable of the passions which are man's imperfec- 
tions, while he must look upon the really wicked 
as wicked, and therefore undeserving of his com- 
placent regard, the sincerely penitent must of ne- 
cessity be restored to his favor ; for they deserve 
it. I know that Christ's death is still regarded by 
many Christians as God's reason for forgiving 
man's guilt. No one can place a higher value 



260 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

than I do on Christ's services to man ; but if it 
was necessary for him to suffer in order for God 
to forgive, God must have been by nature or by 
some antecedent necessity incapable of forgiveness. 
This I cannot believe, in the first place, because 
my conscience, in which I recognize the voice of 
God, tells me that forgiveness is intrinsically right 
in any and every being in the universe toward any 
and every other being ; and, secondly, because, if 
God is perfect, he must be immutable, and there- 
fore there can never have been a time when the 
death of Jesus, in the words of the well-known 
hymn, " turned the wrath to grace." 

But here, again, we find that the revelation came 
none too late. Men, even under the clear teaching 
of Christ, have been amazingly slow to believe that 
God can freely forgive sin, of his own nature, be- 
cause it is his " property always to have mercy." 
They must learn of Christ, themselves to forgive 
sin, must breathe in his spirit of forbearance and 
mercy, and embody it in their own lives, and then 
they can receive the revelation of God's free grace. 
So long as resentment and retaliation are the law 
of (so-called) Christian nations, and of vast num- 
bers of men and women who call themselves Chris- 
tians, the veil which Christ took away will be 
thrown again, and resolutely held down by the 
Church over the mercy-seat of the freely forgiving 
God. 



CHRISTIANITY OLD AS CREATION. 261 

If there is any truth in what I have now said, 
especially with regard to Christian morality, there 
are some prevalent notions and phrases that crave 
a moment's consideration. 

We sometimes hear of a man's rejecting Chris- 
tianity, as if it were a possible thing, and there are 
those, probably some here, who are not unbelievers, 
who really think that they are postponing all con- 
cern with it till some heavy affliction comes, or till 
they find themselves close under the shadow of 
death, or far along on the shady side of life. I do 
not see how this can be done. Can you reject the 
laws of your country or postpone obeying them, 
and yet remain here and go at large ? It is vain 
for you to disclaim allegiance. The law has you 
in its grasp, and you can escape it only by self- 
exile. But Christian morality, if not a figment and 
imposture, is the law of the " land which the Lord 
your God has given you." It executes itself. You 
cannot evade it. You live under it, whether you 
mean to or not. 

This leads me to speak of a phrase in common 
use, — I saw it named yesterday as the subject of 
a lecture to be delivered here this afternoou, — the 
experience of religion, — a good phrase, if rightly 
used ; but it is commonly employed to denote, not 
the necessity of the many, but the privilege of the 
few. Now I know of no truth of more vital mo- 



262 



KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



ment, of no thought that ought to be more impres- 
sive, than that our whole life-experience is a con- 
tinuous experience of religion, — of its inevitable 
working, — if not of its blessings, of its penalties, 
— if not of its plaudit for the faithful servant and 
the obedient life, of its condemnation for the unused 
talent and the steward that can render no account 
to his master. What more truly religious experi- 
ence is there than that of him who has worshiped 
only gods of gold, and whose whole life is lean and 
mean, who grows less as the years pass on, and 
still insatiably greedy, denies himself all the joy of 
earth, and shuts out from his soul every glimpse of 
heaven ? Does not Christianity portray his expe- 
rience when the Divine Teacher says, " What is a 
man profited though he gain the whole world and 
lose his own soul ? " Nor less truly religious is the 
experience of him who abandons himself to sensual 
indulgence, as his very soul becomes materialized, 
as the pleasure that he still craves loses its power 
of pleasing, and, in the decay of all that made him 
more than the brutes that perish he has within, and 
no less in his outer man, the record of Holy Writ, 
" The wages of sin is death." 

My friends, we cannot help experiencing religion. 
Be ours, then, the experience of its promises pro- 
gressively realized in the life that now is, and still 
to unfold new richness of blessing and glory all 
along the ages of eternity. 



SERMON XXII. 



STUMBLING STOXES. 
" A stone of stumbling." — Isaiah viii. 14 

" A STOXE of stumbling," — an obstacle in the 
centre of the straight highway, blocking the travel- 
er's path, and seemingly impassable. He who goes 
forward blindly will stumble upon it, will lose his 
balance, and will have a fall more or less disas- 
trous. There are, however, beside this, two alter- 
natives. One may crawl round it, may waste time, 
strength, and spirits, and, if there are other like 
obstacles looming up before him, may lose heart 
for further progress, and stray off into side-ways, 
which look smooth, but have snares and pitfalls in- 
stead of stumbling stones. Or one may climb it, 
surmount it, that is, mount upon it, stand on top 
of it, where there is a more bracing air, a clearer 
outlook and onlook, while the extensor muscles 
have gained vigor in the climb, and are in all the 
better condition for an ascending progress and for 
other obstacles as they may be encountered. 

Our appointed lifeway is an ascending path, — 
upward if we would have it onward. There are 



264 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



obstacles on it, mercifully placed there to train 
and exercise our best powers of mind and heart, 
none of them insurmountable, though some of them 
are steep and rough in the climbing. It is for us 
to choose whether we will stumble on them, crawl 
round them, or surmount them, and our destiny is 
contingent on our choice. 

Among the obstacles, temptations are the most 
obvious in the way of many, — no less real and in- 
evitable in the way of those whom we call the un- 
tempted ; for in the most sheltered home-life, and in 
society that seems to lie entirely out of the shadow 
of evil, there is no little of wrong-saying and wrong- 
doing under the sanction of example, custom, or 
fashion, which conscience may ignore, but cannot 
justify or palliate. At the same time, we who ac- 
count ourselves as separate from sinners are often 
under the strongest temptation to sins of negligence 
and omission ; and very many to whom the words of 
our confession, " We have done those things which 
we ought not to have done," seem a superfluous form, 
need close self-scrutiny and ought to bow in sincer- 
est self-humiliation as they say, " We have left un- 
done those things which we ought to have done." 

As to what are commonly called temptations, such 
as are encountered by boys and men in early life, 
though seldom by women in a prosperous condition, 
the only safety is in surmounting them. The re- 



STUMBLING STONES. 



265 



maining alternatives are in most cases equally fatal. 
The choice between them is generally a mere ques- 
tion of time ; and if one is going to ruin, it matters 
very little to him how fast he goes, and the faster, 
the less harm he does and to fewer persons. For 
those who stumble and fall on the first temptation 
to dishonesty or to vicious self-indulgence, self- 
recovery is indeed possible, but only by profound 
self-abasement and the most heart-probing peni- 
tence. For the greater part of them, the wrong 
that they have done seems to them very much less 
wrong, nay, almost right, because it is they that 
have done it. As I have said here and elsewhere 
so often that I should be ashamed to say it again, 
were it not at once the most important and the 
most neglected truth in practical morality, one's 
own example is of immeasurably more importance 
to him for good or for evil than all the moral pre- 
cepts that were ever uttered or written, and all the 
examples that were ever set. He who stumbles 
once has seldom any objection to stumbling again, 
and as often as there is a stumbling stone in his 
way, till he is mortally crippled and maimed in 
soul, and it may be in body too. 

But there are many who crawl round the obsta- 
cle. They will not do the thing that they are 
tempted to do, but they will do the thing nearest to 
it that they can call by a name not utterly bad (as, 



266 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

for instance, when a young man, instead of stealing 
outright, clandestinely borrows). They will get as 
close as they can to the border-line between right 
and wrong, where they can look over into the for- 
bidden territory and brood upon it, and wish that 
the line, instead of running straight, would curve 
out a little here and there. And then they will 
stray timidly over the line into some path which 
seems to run just outside of it, and diverges from 
it at so acute an angle that they keep it in sight 
for a while, then unawares lose sight of it, see no 
way back, and so flounder on to utter perdition. 
This is with sad frequency the history of crimes of 
embezzlement and peculation. I think that we all 
have known men who seemed not aware that they 
had ceased to be saints till they were arraigned as 
criminals. 

But the surmounting of the first severe tempta- 
tion is a most memorable epoch, to be looked back 
upon with fervent gratitude. For one has to bring 
into intense action every sinew and muscle of the 
inner man, and that action is development. It 
creates strength that outlasts present need, and is 
in reserve to make the next obstacle, however steep 
and high, easier to be surmounted. Then, too, he 
who has thus trampled Satan under his feet has a 
serener and brighter onlook and uplook, is nearer 
heaven, in a purer sky, and with a conscious bene- 
diction from his God and his Saviour. 



STUMBLING STONES. 



267 



All that I have said applies with equal force to 
the less conspicuous sins of speech and deed, as to 
which we must either yield to them, compromise 
w T ith them, or surmount them, the latter only, with- 
out lowering our character, impairing our useful- 
ness, and blending such virtues as we may possess 
with faults that tarnish their lustre, and even 
threaten their continued existence. 

I want to speak even more emphatically of our 
sins of omission. Here duty is the stone of stum- 
bling, — the obstacle in the way of progress. 
There are a thousand things which we ought to do, 
yet which it is much easier not to do. There is the 
work belonging to our calling, profession, or home- 
life ; there are kindnesses and charities ; there 
are services demanded by this and that social or 
public interest, — an amount that often looms up 
before us very threateningly, yet as to no part of 
which can we get rid of a sense of obligation. 
There are those who stumble at once. They have 
no hesitation to neglect entirely much of what they 
perceive to be incumbent upon them, and they are 
known and know themselves to be idlers, loiterers, 
often obstructive cumberers of the ground which 
they occupy. These, however, are few. 

For us who have many claims upon us, the dan- 
ger is that we creep round these obstacles of close- 
besetting duty instead of facing them fairly, and 



268 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

vigorously surmounting them. We half do the 
things which we are unwilling to leave wholly un- 
done. We do superficially what we ought to do 
thoroughly. We postpone kind deeds with fair 
words, and with promises which we mean, but 
never find time, to keep. We give our names where 
active effort is due. To-day there are calls upon 
us which we put off till a morrow that never comes. 
All this is, at the outset, with the best intentions, 
with the will to be true, helpful, and useful to the 
utmost of our ability, yet still with an undue love 
of ease, and a reluctance to set aside our own pass- 
ing convenience or pleasure. This tendency, once 
yielded to, grows upon us, till we become incapable 
of thorough work, are trustworthy only in part, are 
insincere without knowing it, and have procrasti- 
nated duties and obligations so piled up as to make 
a higher obstacle than we can possibly surmount. 

Our only true course is to surmount these obsta- 
cles, one by one, as we reach them, never to let 
them accumulate, never to permit them to become 
piled up. Every duty has its fit moment, and if 
postponed, it must be either dropped, slighted, or 
suffered to displace some other duty. The rule 
should be : Do faithfully and finish thoroughly the 
work in hand, the work of the day or hour, and let 
your daily path have, for the blocks of its ascend- 
ing pavement, duties surmounted, on which at night- 



STUMBLING STONES. 



269 



fall you may look back and down with a clear con- 
science, and then turn for the morrow, with ever 
more elastic vigor, to those which rise before you, 
to you not stones of stumbling, but successive steps 
and stages on your way to heaven. 

Not only in essential duty, but in every aim or 
pursuit, whether of scholarship, or of professional 
success, or of any worthy object of ambition, there 
are stones of stumbling, obstacles to be encountered 
and surmounted, and they are not hindrances, but 
helps, — the more of them and the steeper, the 
loftier will be the summit attained. The world 
often marvels at what it calls self-made men, who 
seem to have birth, position, surroundings, every- 
thing, against them, and it is commonly said that 
they became what they are in spite of the obstacles 
in their way. In point of fact they became what 
they are by means of those obstacles. The stones 
of stumbling were their stepping stones, on which 
they rose as they went on ; and but for those stones 
they would never have risen above, hardly to, 
mediocrity. I have before me to-day young persons 
who have their ambitions, as students, as destined 
for some honorable profession or calling, or as in 
training for some social position of more or less 
commanding influence. My young friends, you 
will have your obstacles at the outset, hard things 
to learn or to do, difficult problems to master, skill 



270 



KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS. 



to acquire, knowledge which you can make your 
own only by patient and sometimes disappointing 
and baffling effort. Leave these things undone, 
you will merely vegetate, not live. Slight them, 
and the greater your seeming success at the begin- 
ning, the more certain and fatal will be your ulti- 
mate failure. On these early steps there are ob- 
stacles which you can surmount, and which you 
must surmount, if you would get a firm foothold, 
and maintain a sure progress, in any walk of life 
where there is need of intelligence, knowledge, and 
trained ability. 

Among our stones of stumbling I of course can- 
not but lay strong stress on afflictions, which we 
all who reach mature years must encounter, and 
which, I cannot doubt, when we shall look back 
upon them from heaven, we shall account, as we 
try to think them now, as the merciful appoint- 
ments of a benignant Providence. But it rests 
with us whether we will make them so. We may 
stumble upon them and fall. We may let them 
darken for us all that remains of life, so that it 
shall be passed as under the shadow of death. 
But such is the native elasticity of the human 
soul that few succumb thus hopelessly. Our dan- 
ger is that we creep around these obstacles rather 
than stumble upon them ; that we let fresh scenes, 
engagements, and hopes occupy and distract us, 



STUMBLING STONES. 



271 



suppress or drive out sad memories, and leave us, 
though really maimed and crippled as to this lower 
life, with no stronger hold on the life above and 
beyond, nay, with a worldliness the more earthy 
because we neglected the heavenward call with 
which God voiced our trial or sorrow. But we 
may surmount these obstacles, and ascend over 
their summits to the mount of clear vision, where 
we can behold the gems and jewels of the amaran- 
thine crown reserved for us, transcending the 
wealth of worlds upon worlds ; the place among the 
chosen children of God before which all earthly 
success and honor dwindle into insignificance ; the 
home in the Father's house on high, where our 
dearest await us with their welcome, where the 
family will be unbroken, and the farewell will 
never be uttered. 

44 These are they which came out of great tribu- 
lation," is said in prophetic vision of those nearest 
the throne, first in song, clad in raiment pure and 
white as the coronation robe of their Lord and 
Saviour. Nor is this blessedness without its 
earthly foreshining. We certainly have known 
among our saints here below those who have 
climbed where they stand over loss, disappointment, 
shattered hopes, broken fortunes, manifold bereave- 
ments; and every stumbling stone of trial and 
sorrow in their way, as they have surmounted it, 



272 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



has brought them nearer to the Pisgah from which, 
across the death-river, they can see the promised 
land in all its beauty and glory. Such are they 
who realize with St. Paul, himself their type, what 
it is to be " as having nothing, yet possessing all 
things." 

Let it not be forgotten that it is in the surmount- 
ing of obstacles that we are specially the followers 
of Jesus Christ. It is this that made him great, 
that gave him the primacy among the sons of God, 
the name above every name. But for this he might 
have led a blameless life, yet we should never have 
heard of him. He might have quietly served his 
generation in some small way, but would have 
wielded no influence beyond his time, would have 
left no example for the world's guidance and sal- 
vation. He had to encounter every obstacle of 
birth and position. Born in a manger, of the low- 
liest parentage ; brought up in an obscure village of 
a despised province, remote from any centre of 
culture or influence ; with no friends except poor 
and unlettered artisans and fishermen, — human, 
however richly endowed ; susceptible of all human 
infirmities, and with a will-power that might have 
been curbed and deadened by hindrances that 
seemed insuperable, — on those very stones of stum- 
bling he rose* to the consciousness of a position in 
which multitudes might hang upon his words, and 



8 TUMBLING 8 TONES. 



273 



the champions of stupid traditions tremble at his 
iconoclastic might. He knew what he was, — all 
that he might be and do. Then came the tempta- 
tion so to use his conscious capacity of influence 
and power of action as at once to free his people 
from the Roman yoke, and to earn for himself, from 
their well-merited gratitude, wealth, rank, and 
fame. The stones of stumbling towered mountain- 
high on his way, and there was ample room for 
him to creep round them, with no trespass upon 
the absolute right, under shelter of patriotic loyalty, 
and with every self ward motive to seek a kingdom 
of this world. For forty days and nights in the 
wilderness he kept in sight the pile of jagged rocks 
before him, which he could climb only with torn 
hands and bleeding feet, and the smooth, easy 
way round it by which he could creep into favor 
and grovel into eminence. He made the irrevocable 
choice. He stood on a summit with all that the 
world could give beneath him, — on a summit in- 
deed, but only at the base of those loftier heights 
which he had seen in remoter vision. Now close 
at hand are a homeless life, weary days, nights of 
lonely watching, treacherous friends, enemies on 
every hand, the scorn and hatred of men in place 
and power, Herod and Pilate, Jew and Gentile, else 
at strife, made one for his destruction ; and high 
above all, in ever clearer view, the mount of Cal- 



274 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



vary, the cross of shame and agony, the bitter, ig- 
nominious death. But to his eye the heavens are 
opened, and from the cleft sky there sink into his 
soul the words of God, " This is my beloved Son, 
in whom I am well pleased," and from every depth 
of his inmost being goes forth the response, "Lo, I 
come to do thy will, O my God." On and up he 
pursues his unhalting way, at every step overcom- 
ing, surmounting the world, till from the cross he 
rises to the right hand of God, to the throne of re- 
deemed humanity, before which in the fullness of 
time every knee shall bow, and every tongue con- 
fess him to be Lord, and whence come to each of 
us his words : " Be thou faithful unto death, and 
I will give thee a crown of life. To him that 
overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my 
throne, as I also overcame, and am set down with 
my Father in his throne." 



SERMON XXIII. 



THE FEEBLE MEMBERS NECESSARY. 

" Those members which seem to he more feeble are necessary." 
— 1 Cor. xii. 22. 

The least things are worth as much as the great- 
est; for the greatest are worthless without them. 
The failure of a single pin or pivot may arrest the 
working of the most efficient machinery. Ship- 
wreck has been caused by the omission of a single 
bolt. The invention that will revolutionize the 
world's industry is a mere chimsera of the sci- 
entific brain, till it can be actualized by the nice 
adjustment of the minute and to the careless eye 
insignificant accessories that shall put it in play. 
AVatt's great invention, without which the steam- 
engine could not have come into industrial use, was 
dormant in his brain for fourteen years, and nearly 
perished there, simply because Glasgow, where he 
then lived, could not furnish certain essential yet 
lowly forms of operative skill. 

Equally in human society the feeblest and least 
conspicuous members are necessary, and without 
their cooperation the greater are powerless. How 



276 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

many are the humble yet indispensable functions 
that must be discharged faithfully and well, in due 
time and in full measure, in order that interests of 
prime importance may not languish and suffer ! It 
is so in government. Fill the highest places with 
men of consummate ability and excellence ; all the 
good that they can do may be more than neutralized 
by the stupidity or corruption of their subordi- 
nates. It is so in our industries. The operations 
of our great merchants and manufacturers are sus- 
tained and fed by numerous subsidiary arts and 
trades of obscure and lowly men and women. It 
is so in every department of intellectual labor. 
Great minds are often trained and furnished for 
their work by agencies unknown to fame ; the ma- 
terials which they shape, illumine, and glorify are 
accumulated by sublustrous or opaque intellects; 
their theories are verified or their discoveries ap- 
plied by minds of a far inferior order ; and there is 
not a field of science or literature that would not 
remain barren but for the patient toil of those who, 
as mere journeymen or day-laborers, receive but 
scanty returns for the harvest which they make 
ready for the reaper. 

Now this is the order of society ordained by the 
Divine Providence. Writers on natural theology 
have sought to demonstrate the hand of God in 
creation by dwelling on the distribution of the ele- 



THE FEEBLE MEMBERS NECESSARY. 217 



ments of man's material well-being. I agree en- 
tirely with them ; but I trace with much higher sat- 
isfaction the Divine Providence in the distribution 
of abilities and proclivities among men, so that 
there are those who by their very nature are fitted 
for the various positions that need to be filled, and 
for those alone. It would be a world sadly out of 
joint, and probably incapable of holding together, 
if men were as much alike in their capacities as 
lions, tigers, sheep, or oxen. The very subsistence 
of society requires an enormously wide diversity of 
powers and adaptations, and for every place and 
grade in the social scale we find the needed pro- 
portion of those fit for it, no more, no less. In the 
machinery of society there are the many that are 
fit to be only pivots or bolts, the few that are fore- 
ordained to be mainsprings and driving wheels. 
Of those who are capable of governing the state, 
conducting extended operations, swaying the minds 
and hearts of multitudes, filling the foremost places 
of society, advancing the boundaries of knowledge, 
becoming creative spirits in literature and art, there 
are as many as the world needs, can utilize or can 
enjoy ; yet in no time or land is there a wasteful 
overplus of superior ability. To one who has the 
ten talents, there are a score who have five, — hun- 
dreds, nay, thousands, who have but two or one ; 
and while we sometimes see an ambition that tran- 



278 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

scends ability, the very fact that such cases attract 
emphatic observation shows that they are rare. 
Most men have aims commensurate with their ca- 
pacities, fall spontaneously into the niches that they 
can fill. 

Then, again, for work which to most men would 
seem utterly distasteful and repulsive, Providence 
raises up men who not only can do it, but take the 
utmost delight in doing it. For instance, such 
needed literary labors as the making of dictiona- 
ries, concordances, indexes, statistical tables, to most 
men who are capable of making them seem the 
most dreary drudgery ; ninety-nine out of a hun- 
dred would shrink with loathing from such an occu- 
pation to be continued for months or years. Very 
probably there is not one of you here to-day who 
would consent to a life devoted to such work. Yet 
Providence has raised up and endowed men who 
rejoice in it, and would not be willing to do any- 
thing else. Cruden, who made the Concordance of 
our English Bible which many of you probably 
own, found in this occupation the only relief from 
mental depression which sometimes lapsed into in- 
sanity ; and but for his profound interest in this 
work of what might seem the most tedious detail, 
the greater part of his life would have been passed 
in the wards of a lunatic asylum. Our country- 
man, Allibone, when at work on his voluminous 



THE FEEBLE MEMBERS NECESSARY. 279 

Dictionary of Authors, sought amusement during 
a summer vacation in making an alphabetical in- 
dex of three huge octavo volumes. Such things 
may indeed awaken a smile ; but they are much 
better adapted to call forth our gratitude to Him 
who, in the native tastes and inevitable proclivities 
of our fellow-men, has provided for the necessities 
which would else remain unsupplied. 

Such, then, is the constitution of human society, 
— a vast diversity of offices and ministrations, with 
a corresponding diversity of tastes and fitnesses ; 
many members, each with its own function, but all 
alike essential, those that seem to be more feeble 
necessary, as is the eye to the foot, or the ear to 
the eye, or the hand to the ear. 

What are the lessons to be derived from this 
providential order ? 

First, that we be contented, each with and in his 
place. There is no one who might not conjure up 
reasons for discontent, and none with better right 
than those who are in what are called the best 
places. For is there not always a better to which 
they might aspire ? Some of the most utterly dis- 
contented people that I have ever known have been 
among those who to almost every one might have 
appeared objects of envy; and men have died bit- 
terly disappointed, nay, have evidently died of dis- 
appointment, when to all but themselves they seemed 



280 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS, 



at the summit of fame, and when they were little 
short of the summit of position. 

But what possible reason can I have for discon- 
tent with my place, whatever it be ? If I cannot 
be great in it, I shall be smaller out of it. One is 
much more of a man in a position which he can 
fill respectably and honorably than in a position 
beyond his capacity and culture. I can at least be 
useful in my proper calling, and usefulness is in 
itself supremely honorable, not only in the sight of 
God, but equally in the esteem of all whose esteem 
is worth having. Then, too, there is no position in 
which one may not be constantly growing in all 
that constitutes a worthy character. There is no 
work into which a man cannot put all of mind, 
soul, and strength that he has, and make that all 
the greater by diligence and faithfulness. Beside, 
what are these distinctions of great and small ? 
They are only surface-deep. How does all that 
seems to us great dwindle in comparison, not only 
with the Infinite Spirit, but with what earth-born 
angels that we have known already are in heaven, 
and with what we may hope to be if we are fit to 
join them ! On the other hand, what right have 
we to call anything small that is necessary to the 
commonwealth of living souls ? The one question 
for me is not, How does my place rank on any un- 
authoritative scale? but, Is it my place? Am I 



THE FEEBLE MEMBERS NEC ESS ART. 281 



fitted for it ? Is it that in which God would have 
me serve him ? I can trust his careful love in his 
disposing of me. I can have no doubt that he has 
a blessing for me in the lot which he has ordained 
for me, and that I should forfeit that blessing by 
leaving my post. Then, too, though I be a feeble 
member, I bear my part in what the strong and 
great accomplish. They cannot do without me so 
well as I can do without them. If they are the 
eye, I am the hand or the foot, and the eye sees to 
no purpose unless it can reach what it sees, or move 
where the way is open to its vision. Is mine the 
one talent ? Still it is a talent, golden, precious, 
and I shall lose it if I unsphere myself, while I can 
make it two, five, or ten, if I content myself with 
doing with my might what God would have me 
to do. 

Another lesson is that of mutual respect, a les- 
son needed equally by the higher and the lower in 
position and capacity, — by the higher, that they 
suppress both pride and vanity, — by the lower, 
that they purge themselves of envy and jealousy. 
The only claim to respect grows from one's fidelity 
and serviceableness in his place or office, whatever 
it be. If I cannot create in art or literature, I can 
enjoy to the full what others create, and shall I not 
thank God that he has made them capable of thus 
ministering to me, and hold them in untempered 



282 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

esteem, honor, and gratitude for their work's sake ? 
Or if I occupy what seems a privileged position, 
shall I not hold in the kindest regard, and cherish 
as essential members of the body of which I am 
but a member, those whose thousand humbler min- 
istries alone enable me to fulfill mine, and but for 
whose services I must forsake my own place with- 
out being fit for theirs ? Nay, if they are true to 
their calling, are they not exercising a spiritual 
ministry for me by which I ought to be inwardly 
enriched and ennobled ? Have I not among them 
great examples in their truth and honor, in their 
industry and promise-keeping, in their cheerful en- 
durance of privation and hardship, often in virtues 
and graces only the more resplendent because they 
borrow no lustre from their setting, but shine in 
their own pure light ? I can say for myself that, 
in the highest of all learning, that which appertains 
to spiritual culture and to the immortal being, my 
best teachers have been those in the most obscure 
condition, to whom I have gone as their official 
teacher and guide in spiritual things, but have 
found our offices reversed, and have come away 
laden by them with the very gifts which it seemed 
my province to bestow. 

Social distinctions there must indeed be ; for 
community of culture and surroundings, of position 
and employment, must of necessity create affinities 



THE FEEBLE MEMBERS NECESSARY. 283 



which separate while they unite. The intimate as- 
sociation of those whose modes of life are widely 
different would be fatal to the comfort and happi- 
ness of all concerned, and especially of those who 
might seem to be the chief beneficiaries of such 
intercourse. Yet in a right-minded community 
these groups exist side by side with no inhospitable 
exclusiveness, with only the warmest welcome for 
those whose improved culture or condition may 
change their social relations, and with the mutual 
recognition of one another's honored place, equiva- 
lent worth in the social economy, and equal claims 
to consideration in all common concerns and inter- 
ests. The attempt to import into our republican 
society the broad and impassable barriers between 
class and class which have no other basis than the 
exploded fiction of hereditary right, and to flank 
those barriers by superciliousness on the one hand 
and abjectness on the other, is as irrational as it is 
un-Christian. It is leze-majesty against the Divine 
Providence, which in necessitating mutual services 
has enacted as their essential complement recipro- 
cal and common rights and obligations, and has 
made both contempt and envy as unfitting and 
absurd as between hand and foot or eye and ear. 

One lesson more. Christianity makes of this 
world but the training school for a larger and 
higher sphere of being. What that sphere may be 



284 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



or furnish, how like or unlike the present, we can- 
not know. Of this, however, we are assured, that 
there are great places there for all who are fitted 
for them, — high posts of service for all who are 
worthy of them. This, too, we know, — that fidel- 
ity, serviceableness, loyalty to God and love to 
man, are the qualities which will place us among 
the chief and the greatest in the kingdom of 
heaven. 

But in order thus to prepare ourselves for a 
place in heaven, we must each of us have his or her 
place here on earth. Providence has in many in- 
stances determined our places for us. But there 
are those who, without cares of family or of busi- 
ness, seem not unsphered, but non-sphered. Now 
it is precisely these whose fit place is in minister- 
ing to the needs of depressed, ignorant, suffering, 
vicious humanity. They ought to regard them- 
selves as the light infantry of the sacramental host, 
ready for prompt and active service under the 
Captain of their salvation, ready to take and hold 
such posts of duty as may best advance his cause 
and reign. I rejoice to know how many there are 
in this city and in this, congregation who deem 
such philanthropic work their privilege even more 
than their duty. 

Finally, whatever your place here, whether fixed 
for you by Providence, or chosen with reference to 



THE FEEBLE MEMBERS NECESSARY. 285 



the divine will, regard it as your special forecourt of 
heaven, — as the post of service in which, being 
what you are, you can the most surely and amply 
fit yourself for an honored charge among those 
who serve God in the unveiled light of his upper 
sanctuary, where, to every one who has wrought his 
Lord's work under the cloud and behind the veil 
of obscurity, modesty, or self-abasement, it shall be 
said, " Well done, good and faithful servant ; thou 
hast been faithful over a few things ; I will make 
thee ruler over many things." 



SERMON XXIY. 



TRUE WEALTH. 

" As having nothing, and yet possessing- all things." — 2 Cob. 
vi. 10. 

Though Paul wrote in Greek, he was a Roman 
citizen, and familiar with the state of things in the 
Roman empire, under whose law the distinction 
between possession and ownership was real, and 
gave rise to conflicts that often threatened destruc- 
tion and issued in revolution in the body politic. 
Large numbers of people possessed lands which 
they did not own ; for possession meant occupancy 
and use, not ownership. I may own what I do 
not possess ; I may possess what I do not own : and 
possession is of much more importance to me than 
ownership ; for ownership may be out of my 
power ; possession never is. Moreover, what I own 
may make me want to own more without enabling 
me to obtain it ; while I can increase my posses- 
sions as fast as my capacities and cravings grow. 
Of the havers there are many who have never 
been possessors ; of the possessors, many who have 
never been havers; and many again who have 
never attempted to possess till they had lost what 



TRUE WEALTH. 



287 



they had. Neither of these classes are our best 
witnesses. But there are those who have been 
larger havers, and great possessors too, and they, 
I think, have always enjoyed possessing rather 
than having, insomuch that they have not infre- 
quently sacrificed large portions of what they had 
that they might possess the more. Let us look at 
some of the items of the wealth which we may pos- 
sess without having, — at some, I say ; for the full 
catalogue it would take a lifetime to rehearse, since 
to him who can take to himself Paul's words, " Ye 
are Christ's and. Christ is God's/' it is said with 
truth, " All things are yours." 

First, all nature may be our possession, and is 
so, when we are in communion with the incorrupt- 
ible Spirit that is in all things, when the smile of 
God beams upon us from the heavens, his voice 
comes to us on the waters, his breath is wafted to 
us in the fragrance of spring and summer, his 
bounty makes our souls rich and glad in the mel- 
low beauty and the harvest wealth of autumn, his 
might and majesty awaken high thoughts in the 
awful grandeur of winter ; when every phasis of cre- 
ation reveals to us his wealth of beauty, his kindly 
providence, the vastness of his omnipotence, the 
mysteries of his wisdom, the immeasurable height 
and depth and fullness of his love. So far as I can 
take in this or any part of it with adoring rever- 



288 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

ence and with the fervor of a child's heart, it is all 
mine. Whoever calls it his, the usufruct, the rev- 
enue, is mine. 

Equally is ours the divine inspiration that there 
is in art. The great works that make the world 
so much the fitter home for man are none of them 
private or corporate property. They belong not to 
this gallery or to that church, but to every soul 
that can take them in, and can feel in them their 
more than human grandeur or loveliness of concep- 
tion, can trace in them the divine archetypes of 
which they are copies. How can we adequately 
prize the capacity of permanent possession and the 
perpetual revenue of what in nature or in art we 
have seen but once, — the photographic and presen- 
ting power of memory, which makes a mountain, a 
waterfall, a picture, a statue, a cathedral our life- 
long property, renewing for years and years the 
freshness of admiring, adoring thought with which 
we first beheld it ! How rich we grow with these 
treasured experiences, with the numberless slides 
of the magic lantern, some lingering for hours on 
the field of sight, others gliding rapidly over the 
retina, yet with always clear and beatific vision ! 

Then too, in humanity, are not all the great and 
good of our race ours ? Ours they are when they 
feed our thought, when they enrich our imagi- 
nation, when they stir us to noble purpose and 



TRUE WEALTH. 



289 



endeavor, when they cherish our love, enlarge our 
charity, lift our souls on the wings of their devo- 
tion, breathe into us their gentleness and sweet- 
ness, awake in us a generous emulation, present to 
us patterns of excellence by which we may train 
our spirits and make our lives true and beautiful, 
meek and kind, benevolent and philanthropic. 
They are ours all the more because death has made 
them immortal, because from shining lights on 
earth they have become stars in the upper firma- 
ment, where they can be seen by every eye, and 
may be guiding luminaries on the way which all 
may tread. What an unspeakable blessing is it, 
too, that there are not a few such whom we have 
known and still know, who have seemed to us 
hardly to need the consecration of death to make 
them fixed stars in the heaven of our reverence 
and love ! How truly have all such, the living and 
the dead, been ours because they were Christ's and 
God's ! Our revenue from them we should term 
precious beyond all estimate, did they not point 
and lead us to the all-perfect Saviour, who made 
them what they were, and whom it is ours to pos- 
sess in ever growing fullness, if we will mark the 
steps by which he passed on to* heaven, and follow 
him " whithersoever he goeth." 

Ours in possession, also, is or ought to be the 
vast sum of human happiness. For this is a happy 



290 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



world, immeasurably happy, with all the exceptions 
and abatements that we can number. Even under 
what seems to us perpetual cloud and shadow there 
is in man a power of adaptation, an elasticity of 
spirit, which probably gives a preponderance of 
pleasurable sensations to almost every human life ; 
while on how many lives in every condition, the 
shadows, however deep, are transient, the clouds 
have golden rifts ! How many within our familiar 
knowledge are the happy homes, the successful and 
honorable lives, the youth of glad promise, the men 
and women in their genial and glorious prime, those 
serenely happy in old age, those for whom the sun- 
set of the earthly life is consciously the dawn of 
heaven ! All this happiness is ours. Imagine, if 
you can, a prosperous, painless, affluent life, with 
different surroundings, — yourself alone in the sun- 
shine, all but yourself and your own home in ray- 
less gloom, — could the sunbeams cheer or warm 
you? Would not the misery around you make 
you wretched ? There is not a glimpse of joy on 
another's countenance that kindles not in you an 
answering joy. There is not in your circle a happy 
home that does not make your own home the hap- 
pier. Even in your disappointments and sorrows 
you have comfort in living in a happy world. In 
your bereavements it is your consolation that there 
are unstricken households around you, — that there 



TRUE WEALTH. 



291 



are voices of health and gladness that can break in 
upon your grief. Happy, thrice happy, is it for us 
that we are so members of one body, that we do 
sincerely sorrow and rejoice with one another ; for 
the balance is incalculably on the side of joy. We 
indeed note and remember the moments of painful 
sympathy, and this, precisely because they "are the 
exceptions and not the rule, and even they are not 
without their revenue of satisfaction, if not of glad- 
ness. Our fellow-feeling, with the comfort it has 
imparted, with the kinship of spirit which it has 
created, with the closer friendships to which it has 
given birth, is among the last experiences which we 
would part with, among the memories which we 
would gladly treasure for the blessedness to come, 
when we may look back together on all earthly sor- 
rows as we do on troubled dreams when we. wake 
in health and gladness. 

Still more, our capacity of beneficence may en- 
large and accumulate our possessions by a sum to 
which no day should fail to witness an increase. 
It has been well said, " What we give we keep ; " 
and there is nothing else that we are sure of keep- 
ing. There is a felt possession, a sense of perma- 
nent property, in whatever happiness we have cre- 
ated. I knew, and so did some of you, a man in 
this city, among the very richest of his time, who 
for many years was cut off by bodily infirmity from 



292 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



all of what are commonly called the enjoyments of 
life, — from almost all use for his own personal ben- 
efit of the property of which he had the ownership. 
He never sat at his own table. He weighed the 
stale bread which was the only food that he dared 
to take, and of that he dared not to take enough to 
appease his incessant hunger. He could give him- 
self absolutely no indulgence in which the mortal 
frame was needed to bear a part. Yet I never 
knew a happier man ; for he made it his life-work 
to create happiness, to inquire into need and dis- 
tress, to send relief to the destitute, to gladden pov- 
erty-stricken homes, to lighten the burdens of age 
and infirmity, to make children's eyes dance and 
their hearts leap. It always seemed to me that he 
realized spiritually the brutal wish of the imperial 
glutton, that he had a thousand mouths to feed 
with. I am sure that he fed every day with glad- 
ness and thanksgiving at more tables than he could 
count, that he was warmed by the fires that he 
kindled on else cheerless hearths, that there was 
not a gift of his that was not as truly a godsend to 
himself as to the recipients of his bounty. With 
all his wealth, he was constrained to be as one 
having nothing ; yet he was as one possessing all 
things. 

Possessions of this kind are always within our 
reach. The opportunities for doing good are in- 



TRUE WEALTH. 



293 



cessant in our waking hours, co-extensive with our 
social lives. We may or may not have what are 
called large means of beneficence. The rule for us 
must be that of the ancient book, " Be merciful 
after thy power. If thou hast much, give plente- 
ously. If thou hast little, do thy diligence gladly 
to give of that little ; for so gatherest thou thyself 
a good reward in the day of necessity." But we 
all have large means of beneficence, unless we our- 
selves are pitifully small ; for we ourselves are our 
most ample means of beneficence. Our whole 
social life may be coined into utilities, not, to be 
sure, all of it into pounds or talents, but — what is 
of even more importance — into mites and farthings 
of considerate and unceasing kindness. We are 
never in one another's society without throwing off 
continually proof impressions of ourselves. There 
is a perpetual effluence of such temper, such spirit 
as is within us. Then, too, we are constantly with 
recipient souls that take from us what will make 
them happier and better, if we are truly meek and 
kind and generous. And how many there are to 
whom in our intercourse little things are great ! In 
our own households we may diffuse untold happi- 
ness by the unselfish spirit which is always ready 
to concede and slow to claim. Among our friends 
and our casual associates costless courtesy, un- 
studied kindness, the tone of intercourse designated 



294 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 



in the phrase, " in honor preferring one another," 
may be a perpetual ministry of peace, harmony, 
and gladness. There are always those whom kind 
words, even a kind look, may cheer and encourage, 
may sometimes ease of pressing burdens, of incipi- 
ent despondency, — an influence which, I suppose, 
we all have felt and should therefore never be slow 
to impart. There are little children whom a mere 
smile or the slightest token of sympathy will glad- 
den. There are the weary, sad, infirm, dispirited, 
to whom we may carry brightness from our own 
happier condition. There are those whom we can 
counsel, warn, strengthen in the right, help over 
steep and rough passages in their way. Now it is 
no mere figure of speech, but we shall find it a 
blessed experience, that all that we do for others 
remains ours, our possession for life, our possession 
for eternity. 

In all these ways we may possess, even though 
we have not ; and if we have, what we thus possess 
is more truly and enduringly ours. The time is 
not far for any of us, for some no doubt very near, 
when we shall have nothing; for as we brought 
nothing into this world, it is certain that we can 
carry nothing out of it. For that day God grant 
that we be written among those, though "having 
nothing, yet possessing all things." 



SERMON XXV. 



OUR IGNORANCE OF THE FUTURE, 

"Thou knowest not what a day may bring- forth." — Psov. 
xxvii. 1. 

How true this is there is no need o£ saying, and 
though knowledge as to everything else has grown, 
and in many departments exact science has re- 
placed ignorance or conjecture, these words are 
as true now as when they were written ; nay, the 
future of each individual is less calculable than 
then, and the variables that cannot be foreseen are 
more numerous. Yet it might have been other- 
wise, and would, I believe, were there not a dis- 
tinctly and intentionally providential element in 
human life. Science and skill loose the seals and 
read the future of things once deemed inscrutable ; 
and were man under no other government than 
automatic material laws, casting his horoscope and 
predicting his fortune would not be an exploded 
superstition, but a problem capable of exact solu- 
tion. Moreover, the Supreme Being might have 
made our future calculable. We can conceive of a 
system under which we should know all that awaits 



296 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMQNS. 

us of good or evil, so that there should be no hap- 
piness beyond or aside from our expectation, no 
sorrow that was not preceded by its admonishing 
shadow. But I want to show you, as I feel, how 
largely we are indebted to the unexpectedness of 
events for all that makes life worth living. 

In the first place, this unexpectedness adds im- 
measurably to our happiness, both by what it saves 
us from and by what it bestows. It is no fiction 
that the severest trials and heaviest sorrows are 
more grievous in the anticij^ation than in the en- 
durance. The cup, when it is put to our lips, is 
mingled for us with reliefs, consolations, hopes. 
When we seize upon it before it is ready for us, 
we have its unmixed bitterness. But we can sel- 
dom thus anticipate it. Either calamity or grief 
comes upon us suddenly, or if it looms before us, 
we dwell more on the possibility of its passing over 
than on what it will be if it comes, and till the last 
moment we are beguiled by hopes, unreal indeed, 
yet not unfounded, as they are based, not on out- 
ward circumstances, but on the very constitution of 
mind and soul that God has given us. Then when 
we can hope no longer, we find the burden or sor- 
row fully as heavy, indeed, as we could have ex- 
pected had we clearly foreseen it ; but we have 
s} T mpathy, comfort, and help from Heaven and 
from the friends that Heaven gives us in an afflu- 
ence which we could not have foreseen. 



OUR IGNORANCE OF THE FUTURE. 297 

Then as to positive enjoyment, it is very certain 
that we derive more happiness from imagination 
than from experience. The vision, when realized, 
has lost its roseate hue, its silver lining, its fringes 
of gold. We borrow from the future much more 
than it will ever pay. We base upon its possibili- 
ties an expanded currency, of which we have the 
use, but which it never redeems. We are poets, 
makers, creators, all our lives long, and the mate- 
rial of our poetry is the dim and vague, but always 
rich and bright prospective of coming years or 
days. It is real in the most intimate sense ; we 
feel it, we enjoy it, we are enriched by it ; we in- 
corporate it into the substance of our being; it 
gives tone to our characters. Without this creative, 
poetic faculty and habit, a man is poor, though 
rich ; unhappy, though with all outward means of 
happiness. With it the poor are rich, and he who 
has nothing may possess all things. Our hopes 
indeed far transcend our reasonable expectations ; 
but what matters this, if we can live on and in our 
hopes ? There is even in the most prosperous life 
a great deal of dry prose, repetition, routine, even 
drudgery ; and it is made not only endurable, but 
happy, by the rhythm of our day-dreams, which 
sets the prose to music, and lightens weariness 
with song. Nor is this hopefulness mere delusion. 
It is rather prophecy. Our hope, God-breathed I 



298 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMOXS. 

cannot doubt, is the earnest of a future where it 
will all be more tlian realized. It is a discount 
upon heaven, where our drafts will be overpaid. 
This buoyancy, this expectant habit of the soul, 
which lasts unimpaired till the active powers are 
crippled by age, and even then, instead of being 
reversed, lapses into quiet waiting, is an intensely 
strong confirmation of the words of eternal life 
that come to us from the Lord of life, and is an 
authentic token of immortality. 

In the next place, the uncertainty of the future 
is a needed and perpetual stimulus in all healthful 
activity and enter prise. Had we our lives mapped 
out before us, how tame would life be, how circum- 
scribed its endeavors, how crippled its energies ! 
The certain, the inevitable, — how passively should 
we await its treasured good, how sullenly should 
we submit to its privations and calamities ! Our 
nerveless toil would be carefully narrowed to the 
measure of what it would bring ; our precautions 
limited to what we were foreordained to prevent. 
Genius, science, art, skill would have their only 
scope in doing what they were forced to do. It is 
the unforeseen that keeps our powers in vigorous 
exercise. The ship has her ribs of solid oak, her 
Cyclopean knees, her triply bolted and riveted 
frame, not for such roughened seas and adverse 
winds as she may for years encounter without 



OUR IGNORANCE OF THE FUTURE. 299 



peril, but for the possible emergency when her ribs 
shall grind, and her knees quiver, and her frame 
quake, as if giant hands were clutching at e very- 
timber and prying at every crevice. The edifice, 
the bridge, the causeway, the lighthouse, is built, 
not for the safe occupancy or use that may never 
be disturbed, but so as to meet contingencies of 
every conceivable peril. Communities, govern- 
ments, legislators, frame states and codes and social 
organisms, not with sole reference to a foreseen 
future, but with a provident wisdom which takes 
in the whole range of the possible, and thus wards 
off dangers, averts evils, and cherishes the germs 
of progressive intelligence and prosperity. That 
the specific good that can be attained or evil that 
may be averted is not foreseen, is the motive of all 
thorough and faithful work in every department of 
human activity. While we know not what will be, 
we employ our sagacity in determining the outside 
limits of what can be, and our energy in provid- 
ing for or against all that there can possibly be of 
good or of evil. The mind is thus kept in vigor- 
ous tension in ascertaining the limits of safety, in 
analyzing the beneficent and the perilous objects, 
aspects, and tendencies in every department of 
nature, in establishing the dominion of human wis- 
dom and of combined human agency over the world 
of which God has given man the sovereignty, and of 



300 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



which lie maintains the sovereignty solely by the 
indeterminateness of its future, and the scope thus 
afforded for his constructive, defensive, aggressive 
genius and enterprise. 

Then, too, who of us is there that has any capa- 
city or energy, who is not kept in vigorous activity 
and urged on to higher attainments and increased 
ability by his ignorance of his own future, which 
always presents the possibility of making that 
future prosperous and happy by industry, thrift, 
discretion, and enterprise ? To be sure, the most 
that we shall attain will fall short of our aims. 
But what of that ? It is what we are, not what we 
attain, that chiefly concerns us. And we are im- 
measurably more, greater, better, in mind, soul, and 
character, by laboring for what we shall never 
reach, than we could be were we to measure our 
strength and our steps by a distinctly foreseen 
future, which would always be a retarding force on 
our best and noblest powers and. faculties. 

In no department of effort would clear foresight 
of the future have so paralyzing an influence as in 
our benevolence and philanthropy. The past may 
teach us this. Men's endeavors for one another's 
good have been successful, eminently so, yet only 
tentatively, slowly, with perpetual failures and dis- 
appointments, which, could they have been fore- 
seen, would have been utterly disheartening. A 



OUR IGXORAXCE OF THE FUTURE. 301 



very large proportion of the seed has fallen on the 
wayside, or among thorns, or on stony ground ; yet 
it has done the sowers incalculable good to have 
cast their seed in generous handf uls, and had they 
not done so, the thirty, sixty, hundred fold would 
not have been reaped on the congenial soil. For 
us there is the same incalculableness of specific 
success, the same possibility of specific failure, 
which, could we forsee it, would give prudence the 
mastery over our benevolent impulses. Were we 
to count the cost and calculate the profit, we should 
lose the heart to give and to labor. It is well for 
us that in sowing beside all waters we know not how 
or where the increase may come, and especially, 
that we cannot see beforehand where our kind- 
ness shall seem to have been bestowed in vain. At 
all events, the good of generous bestowal and labor 
is ours ; the example is the world's property ; the 
revenue is certain though we cannot trace it ; the 
harvest is laid up for us in heaven, and I have no 
doubt that there, for much of the seed which we 
thought wasted and lost, we shall find ripened 
wheat-sheaves. 

Above all, it is of the highest worth to us mor- 
ally and spiritually that we know not what a day 
may bring forth. He who walks about the streets 
of a city by daylight needs no weapon. He who 
has a specific danger to guard against selects his 



302 



KING'S CHAPEL SEEMONS. 



appropriate mode of defense, and employs no other. 
Bat he who starts on a journey or voyage fraught 
with multitudinous and unknown perils provides 
himself with every attainable means and. instru- 
ment of defense and protection. The history of an 
individual life may present a very limited range 
of trials, temptations, emergencies, for which much 
less of preparation than would make up a perfect 
character might suffice. Some, though very few, 
have no severe afflictions. Many, I suppose, pass 
through life with no temptations to great sins. 
Many have no special occasion for more energy 
than will sustain them on the well-worn track of 
respectable living. But there is not one of us for 
whom any possibility of sad experience, of threat- 
ened moral evil or of arduous and painful duty, 
may not become a reality ; and this is often the case 
where at the outset there is not the slightest prob- 
ability that life will flow otherwise than smoothly 
and quietly. Moreover, in these matters the words 
of my text are oftener than not literally verified. 
We know not what a day may bring forth. "We 
have seen death with no forecast shadow, and 
homes even in festal array suddenly made desolate. 
Temptations of abnormal severity are sprung upon 
one without premonition, and not infrequently 
yielded to by those who a day before would have 
exclaimed indignantly, " Is thy servant a dog that 



OUR IGNORANCE OF THE FUTURE. 303 



lie should do this thing ? " With equal suddenness, 
too, are heavy responsibilities sometimes cast on 
shoulders that had known no burden. The only 
safety lies in preparation at every point. The 
only availing counsel is, 44 Put on the ivhole armor 
of God," and all of it is essential to perfect hu- 
manity. It may all be fitted and worn in advance 
of special needs ; and it cannot be put on in part 
and by piecemeal, or taken up in haste when the 
emergency flashes upon us. Preparation must 
precede trial, must anticipate need. There are 
characters which can meet surprise undaunted, can 
pass through fiery temptation unscathed, can come 
off more than conquerors in any stress of trial, can 
bear with elastic strength the heaviest burdens of 
trust, care, and responsibility. In order that one 
be thus prepared, there must be truth and integrity, 
pureness and loftiness of thought, the faith in Christ 
which brings one into sympathy and fellowship with 
him, the hope of immortality, and with and above 
all an abiding sense of the present God, Witness, 
Judge, Eewarder, Father. 

Now suppose the current of life unruffled, pros- 
perous, happy, — this preparation is none the less 
needed ; for such a life has its perils. Without 
religious faith and principle, an easy condition en- 
genders a low type of character. It invites one to 
float on its current, aimless, unprofitable, seeking 



304 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



transient pleasure as the supreme good, only to be- 
come early weary of it, to find its cisterns broken 
and their waters stale. There is in an uneventful, 
easy, non-religious life a certain type of superannu- 
ated childhood, to which age brings no maturity, 
and which only cumbers the ground that it may 
once have adorned. 

The prosperous, happy, uneventful life ought to 
be a fountain of beneficence, in example, in influ- 
ence, in active service, in benign ministries ; and 
for this is needed precisely the same type of char- 
acter, which alone can meet the adverse blasts of 
temptation aud trial. 

But for many of us the way to life, the way to 
heaven if we will make it so, must lie through con- 
flict and peril ; what, we know not ; when, we know 
not. Some of us even now are in the stress of bat- 
tle. For others it may be close at hand. We 
know not what a day may bring forth. The mor- 
row may have that which will wrench all the springs 
of endurance, will test all the force of principle, 
will break down all frail supports of character, 
and will leave us in our own consciousness just 
what we are now in the sight of God, clothed in 
his armor and able to stand in the evil day, or un- 
clothed of even such semblance of goodness as we 
may now possess. Be ours, then, the preparation 
of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the 
sword of the spirit which is the word of God. 



SERMON XXVI. 



THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION. 

A SERMON PREACHED AT THE DEDICATION OF A MONU- 
MENT IN MEMORY OF THE YOUNG MEN OF THE PARISH 
WHO FELL DURING THE RECENT WAR, ON EASTER SUN- 
DAY, APRIL 21, 1867. — [REPRINTED.] 

" The power of his resurrection." — Philippians iii. 10. 

To one who studies the history of the age imme- 
diately preceding the advent of Christ, there is no 
more salient fact than the prevalent smallness and 
paltriness of character, the abounding profligacy of 
private morals, and, as a necessary consequence, 
the utter dearth of public spirit, civic virtue, and 
patriotism. The Jews had nothing left to glory in 
but the sepulchres of their fathers. The Grecian 
states had fallen a prey more to their own corrup- 
tion than to Roman arms. In Rome it is hard to 
find a single name w r hich looks great in every as- 
pect. The man who, as philosopher, orator, states- 
man, patriot, held the foremost place in the last 
days of the republic, often amuses, often disgusts 
us by his vanity and egotism, and lets us see in his 
character fully as much to excuse and to pity as to 



306 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

admire. Of his distinguished coevals there was 
hardly one who was not ready to pursue his own 
aggrandizement through rivers of fratricidal blood, 
or who would not rather have sacrificed his coun- 
try than have held an inferior place in its coun- 
sels. 

But with the risen Saviour began the rising of 
fallen humanity. St. Paul belongs to an order of 
nobility whose charter bears the signature of the 
resurrection-angel. He designates in our text the 
moulding principle, the energizing force of his life, 
from the day when the Lord appeared to him on 
the way to Damascus. His was a type of character 
that indicated the entrance of a new element of 
power into the field of human discipline and action ; 
and he was but the greatest of a host of Christian 
heroes, who drew their strength from the broken 
sepulchre, and have transmitted like peculiar and 
transcendent traits of spiritual excellence all down 
the Christian ages. 

The resurrection is not only the most conspicu- 
ous event in the history of Jesus : it is, equally, a 
spiritual power of intensest momentum and effi- 
cacy. It certifies us of immortality as no reason- 
ing can. Death is not an inference, but a fact, and 
it needs to be confronted by fact experienced and 
witnessed. A visible resurrection, authenticated 
by those who saw it, and transmitted in enduring 



THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION. 307 



record, alone can abolish death, and bring immor- 
tality to light. The resurrection of Christ, too, 
transfigures all the sad accompaniments and acces- 
sories of death, — the altered countenance, the 
mortal agony, the grave-clothes, the loneliness and 
desolation of the tomb ; and in the light of Easter 
morning they are symbols, no longer of death, but 
of the higher life, — no longer of the crumbling 
tabernacle of clay, but of the soul emancipated, 
ennobled, enthroned among the principalities of 
heaven. 

The power of the resurrection is felt, first, in the 
appeal which it makes to hope and fear, in the cer- 
tainty which it attaches to a righteous retribution, 
in the assurance from the lips of him who was dead 
and is alive again that all who are in the graves 
shall hear his voice and come forth, they that have 
done good to the resurrection of a happy life, they 
that have done evil to the resurrection of condem- 
nation. This influence is not to be despised. Fear, 
though in due time it yields place to love, has its 
God-assigned office at the outset and in various 
emergencies of the Christian life ; and were it not 
so, the Divine retribution is of unspeakable worth 
as an intensely emphatic expression of God's re- 
gard for his own moral law, and of the identity 
of that law with the nature and constitution of the 
spiritual universe. 



308 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



The power of the resurrection is next felt in de- 
termining for those who believe in it their prime 
objects of pursuit and endeavor. Were death a 
terminus, it would still be inexpedient for us to be 
vicious, or sordidly selfish ; for vice would waste 
our earthly heritage prematurely, and by selfishness 
we should forfeit more of the common stock than it 
would be in our power to monopolize. We should 
deem it wise to cultivate the cheap and easy vir- 
tues, — those which yield an immediate revenue. 
But those which involve moral enterprise, heroism, 
arduous effort, costly sacrifice, would not be worth 
their price, — their earthly revenue seems so very 
small, and is often so very remote. But if we be- 
lieve ourselves immortal, the longest investments 
are the best. We can welcome what is now not 
joyous, but grievous, for the far more exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory which it will earn for 
us. We are solicitous, not for what will yield im- 
mediate gratification, but for those gifts of mind 
and heart, those traits of spirit and life, which will 
be our joy and crown when we shall have risen with 
Christ to die no more. 

The resurrection has a yet more subtile, pervad- 
ing and diffusive power, exercised in great part un- 
consciously, affecting character in its very earliest 
stages, entering into the currents of thought, feel- 
ing, example, and influence in all Christian house- 



THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION. 309 



holds, and, to a great extent, in every Christian 
community. In all growth space is an essential 
element. The kernel of wheat sown in a shallow 
vessel shoots up into a green blade, which withers 
and dies before it comes to flower. The acorn 
planted in a thick-set grove never exceeds the sta- 
ture of a shrub. In like manner the soul shapes 
itself by the space in which it expects to grow. 
Bounded by the span of this earthly life, it is nar- 
rowed, dwarfed, belittled in every direction. It is 
conscious of small room and brief time for increase, 
and instinctively adapts itself to its mean and lim- 
ited conditions. It strikes its tendrils into the 
ground, because it has no heaven toward which it 
can climb. It becomes sordid, because its future 
has in it nothing great, or lofty, or enduring. But 
the very child who is taught from his earliest years 
to believe himself immortal, though nothing may 
be farther from his distinct consciousness than liv- 
ing for immortality, yet has his infant being en- 
larged, exalted, strengthened by the thought. His 
aspirations transcend the measure of earthly pos- 
sibility, nor are they checked by the fear or dark- 
ened by the shadow of death. His ideal of char- 
acter takes on, without his knowing it, much of the 
heavenly element, and is immeasurably larger and 
higher than had he never heard of a life to come. 
If it be not literally true that "heaven lies about 



310 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



us in our infancy," where is the child that has 
received the rudiments of Christian culture, whose 
plan of life does not take in heaven ; who does not 
inwardly mean, at all events, whatever else he may 
forego, not to forego a blessed immortality ; whose 
opinions and feelings about right and wrong are 
not moulded and hallowed by the power of an end- 
less life ? To be sure, with sad frequency this re- 
ligion of the young heart seems to be worn off by 
attrition with the non-religious world. Yet its fra- 
grance lingers in the soul of the ingenuous youth, 
who grows up a nobler being than had heaven 
never been thus opened to him, with worthy im- 
pulses, broad sympathies, capacities of generous 
action, endurance, and sacrifice, which would not 
be his, had he been always accustomed to think of 
himself as a mere ephemeral existence. The very 
highest type of character is, indeed, produced only 
by the perpetual activity of the religious principle. 
But where this is wanting, the unconscious con- 
sciousness of immortality — if you will permit the 
seeming contradiction of terms for the great truth 
to which it gives expression — performs a most im- 
portant and precious part in moral self-education, 
in the shaping and development of the principles 
and the affections, in the choice of pursuits, in the 
direction of the whole life-current of thought, feel- 
ing, and endeavor. It expands and strengthens the 



THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION. 311 

extensor muscles of the manly will. It brings into 
full tension and activity the hardier sinews of the 
moral nature. It creates the capacity of heroic 
virtue. 

I might illustrate this element of power by asking 
you to consider the contrast between the American 
and the first French Revolution. The motive and 
the end were the same. Both were struggles against 
a galling tyranny and in behalf of popular freedom. 
The initial watchwords and war-cries were identi- 
cal. But the actors in the French Revolution had 
abandoned, with their faith in God, their hope of 
heaven. They were a host of Titans, strong and 
fierce, but earth-limited as earth-born. In the 
sacred name of their country each man fought for 
the gratification of his own avarice, ambition, lust, 
or enmity ; and the result was such a carnival of 
rampant selfhoods as made the people a horde of 
sanguinary Ishmaels, converted the land into an 
Aceldama and a Golgotha, and merged a despotism 
which, bad as it was, had at least the filaments of 
law and order, in an anarchy, which could find no 
fit prototype except in the weltering chaos and the 
rayless night when the earth was without form and 
void. On the other hand, a latent faith in God 
and immortality made ours a generous contest for 
the noblest rights and the highest privileges of our 
race, for institutions that should nourish free souls 



312 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



for the service of God and man, for homes and 
schools and altars that should train successive gen- 
erations equally for earth and for heaven. 

This same principle has been exemplified in our 
recent conflict, and could not but have been veri- 
fied in its issue. Long as the fortune of war 
seemed against us, we never doubted our ultimate 
success ; and if we were to analyze the grounds of 
our hope, they would resolve themselves into the 
power of the resurrection. We expected to pre- 
vail, not because of our physical superiority, but 
because the principles for which we were driven to 
do battle were such as recognized the rights of all 
men as God's immortal children, and thus appealed 
with irresistible cogency to the heart and conscience 
of every man who felt himself to be immortal ; 
while Slavery, in reducing its victim-race to a serf- 
dom of mind and soul, could have justified itself 
only by denying the immortal destiny and heavenly 
birthright of the enslaved. 

Most fittingly have you chosen Easter Sunday 
for the special commemoration of the young men 
from your own families and your household of faith, 
who became immortal in this great war of freedom. 
When you recall their beautiful promise, the vigor 
of their glorious manhood, the noble self-surrender 
of their patriotism, the traits of strength and love- 
liness, the sweet domestic virtues, the tender bonds 



THE POWER OF THE RES URRECTION. 313 



of sonship, brotherhood, and kindred, which made 
their sacrifice so precious and so costly, you cannot 
but feel that they became what they were under the 
sunbeams that shine ever from the broken sepul- 
chre of the Lord. In a community on which that 
light had never risen, in a congregation of unbe- 
lievers, you could not have had such sons and bro- 
thers to give to your country, nor would such as 
might have been yours have responded to the coun- 
try's call in her hour of peril. They went from 
you, not because the peaceful fields of honorable 
ambition were closed against them, — not because 
the camp and bivouac offered aught that was con- 
genial with their nature or their tastes, — not be- 
cause the profession of arms was in any sense their 
choice ; for to most of them it was in itself unde- 
sired, unwelcome, and embraced with the clear con- 
sciousness of postponement, disadvantage, and loss, 
perhaps irretrievable, as to their life-aims. Had 
they been the sordid, mean-spirited youth which an 
earth-bounded horizon must have made them, they 
would have left mere hirelings to take their places 
on the tented field and at the cannon's mouth, and 
have remained at home to reap the rich mercan- 
tile harvest gathered by almost every one who has 
thrust in his sickle, They knew, as thoroughly as 
we know now, what they were giving to the public 
cause. They knew, as we did not know then, the 



314 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



imminent stress of their peril. They counted not 
their lives dear, if those lives might be the purchase 
of their country's life. 

They knew, too, in dying, that for such disinter- 
ested self-sacrifice there was a better resurrection. 
Nor have they fallen in vain : nor have they failed, 
even on earth, of the better resurrection. In them 
have been already verified the Saviour's words : 
" Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth 
much fruit." Mere brute force might have been 
superior in the field ; but there are fruits of vic- 
tory, which could have grown and ripened only 
from such seed-corn as you have sown in tears. 
The pure, generous, noble youth who gave their 
bodies to the earth, their souls to God, live in the 
higher type of manhood, the loftier aims, the more 
worthy purposes, the more strenuous and faithful 
life-work, of those who stood at their side, of the 
still younger men who are coming forward into 
their vacant places. Many of the living will for- 
ever bless the dead for the heritage of their virtues. 
Not one has fallen whose mantle rests not on a 
goodly company of his fellows. And did we not 
all need that our country should be redeemed at 
such a price, to make us feel its worth, to rouse us 
from our supineness under national guilt and evil, 
to show us the atrocity of the great public wrong 



THE POWER OF THE RESURRECTION, 315 



and sin that grew so long under our passive acqui- 
escence, to awaken our slumbering patriotism, and 
to reveal to us the blessedness of our free institu- 
tions, — now for the first time free indeed, and 
shedding the pure radiance of their beacon-fire for 
oppressed and struggling nations ? Cost and worth 
are correlative terms. "Ye are bought with a 
price" is the watchword for civic virtue no less 
than for Christian piety. 

Yes, the dead shall rise, our dead men shall live, 
in the vigilance which shall guard our public integ- 
rity and well-being, in the strong hands by which 
the ark of our liberty shall be upborne, in the re- 
ligion of patriotism which shall pervade the homes 
and hearts of the bereaved, of those who in tender 
sympathy have shared their sorrow, of those in near 
and distant generations who will look with rever- 
ence and gratitude on the monument you this day 
consecrate, and on like structures in our churches, 
our halls, our places of public concourse, all over 
the land. In thus honoring the departed, you ad- 
monish and instruct, you ennoble and energize the 
living, the yet unborn. The heroes who have gone 
from you still and ever speak, and their dying sac- 
rifice shall be renewed in unnumbered living, and 
if there again be need (which Heaven forefend!), 
dying sacrifices for liberty, peace, and union. 

The Lord's resurrection has a more intimate les- 



316 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

son of comfort and hope for the many bereaved 
households, the record of whose grief and glory is 
inscribed on yonder tablet. Of what you so wor- 
thily cherished nothing is lost, — not one trait of 
beauty, not one germ of promise, not one budding 
virtue, not one pure and holy love. He that loseth 
his life for duty shall find it in the life eternal. 
He who took the faithful and excellent from you 
keeps them for you. They are still in the same 
universal house of God with you, and there are 
even now from room to room avenues along which 
love and intercession may pass and repass. In one 
house now, in God's good time you shall all be in 
one room. While you wait, oh, praise and serve 
and follow your risen Saviour, him in whom your 
dead live, him in whom the whole family in heaven 
and earth is now and forever one. 



SERMON XXVII. 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 

A SERMON PREACHED ON JUNE 2, 1867, BEING THE SUN- 
DAY AFTER THE DECEASE OF THOMAS BULFINCH. — [RE- 
PRINTED.] 

" By it he being 1 dead yet speaketh." — Hebrews xi. 4. 

" By it," that is, by faith, and by that moral, 
spiritual excellence which is the fruit of faith. 

Not only had Abel's name come down in the 
Hebrew records as that of a true worshiper and 
faithful servant of Jehovah; but his early and (hu- 
manly speaking) untimely death had been among 
the events pointing to a higher life ; for if tho.se 
whom God loves die young, death, it was argued, 
can be only translation ; and if the best men pros- 
per the least in this world, it must be because 
another realm of prosperous and happy being is 
reserved for them. Thus his example was doubly 
instructive and precious, at once showing the way, 
and pointing to the end, of a virtuous life, — illus- 
trating the rule of duty, and suggesting the highest 
and strongest motive for obeying it. 

When our friends are called away from us, we 



318 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

are prone to use that saddest of all words, — lost. 
We are too little apt to perceive and confess how 
much of them there is that remains to us, how 
much that could not die, how much that will grow 
even more vivid and precious as the years roll 
on, and will verify with an ever increasing fullness 
the words, " He, being dead, yet speaketh." 

Let us now consider some of the ways in which 
we, who lament the absence from our sight of the 
faithful and excellent, may hope to find these words 
fulfilled. 

In the first place, I think that we understand the 
characters of our friends better, after they have 
gone from us, than while they were with us, and 
that they thus speak to us in their examples with 
greater precision and emphasis. Take the instance 
of one whom none knew but to praise and love. 
To praise and love is not to understand. The life 
may have been one of incessant and various occu- 
pation, and the transactions and utterances of every 
day may have been regarded with warm approval, 
and have ministered to the growth of the most sin- 
cere and fond affection ; but they have been beheld 
in themselves rather than in their motives and prin- 
ciples, and as separate incidents rather than as the 
expression and outflow of a nobly framed and con- 
sistent character. Thus, as we pass through the 
streets of a town or city, the eye takes in single ob- 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 319 

jects, but not the site, or plan, or general features. 
For these we must seek an elevated position, from 
which minute details will disappear or dwindle, 
while great outlines and characteristics will be 
plain and clear. Death gives us this elevation as 
to human character. We before knew, it may be, 
that the life was beautiful and lovely ; we now see 
why it was so, — what was its pervading spirit, 
what its sacred laws of speech and action, what the 
great lessons of duty that it teaches, — the golden 
threads which held the whole together, and gave 
symmetry and unity to the endlessly varied forms 
of utterance and activity. And how intense the 
emphasis which death gives to the cardinal virtues 
of one whom we had tenderly loved, and especially 
to the one predominant trait, be it conscientious- 
ness, or gentleness, or fortitude, or courage, or be- 
nevolence, or spirituality ! We now see how that 
trait branched out in various directions, assumed 
different phases, gave energy and vividness to the 
other virtues, at once fostering them, and in turn 
fostered by them ; and a voice comes to us from 
the yet recent, and in after years from the still 
cherished grave, commending to us that special as- 
pect of goodness, urging it upon us as the due trib- 
ute of undying human love no less than of piety, 
and rebuking us for every departure from it. 
Nor let it be said that this peculiar sacredness 



320 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

attached to any single trait of excellence is adapted 
to make one-sided and deficient characters. For, 
in the first place, the virtues are a sociable sister- 
hood, and cannot well live apart, so that one of 
them sedulously wooed and won brings in all her 
sisters with her, she remaining only first among 
equals ; and, secondly, the individuality which dis- 
tinguishes one good man from another, and among 
the most excellent makes one star differ from an- 
other, when not in the degree, in the kind of glory, 
consists in the predominance of some single virtue, 
while the others are not wanting, and in the pecu- 
liar tone and grouping created by this predomi- 
nance. 

It is, therefore, an infinite gain and benefit, if 
death has so endeared to us any one form or aspect 
of goodness, any special cluster of Christian graces, 
that we cannot contentedly remain in that regard 
defective or faulty ; for while this form, or aspect, 
or cluster may determine the order and proportion 
of our virtues, it will not suffer us in any depart- 
ment of duty to be barren and unfruitful. 

In the next place, our friends who have gone be- 
fore us to heaven speak especially to us of the 
need and worth of Christian faith and piety, and 
no living words can equal in impressiveness the 
tacit pleading of death. When a life closes, the 
inquiry which seems to be awakened at once in 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 



321 



every heart, even in the irreligious and the reck- 
less, is, " Was the departed prepared to die ? " I 
have been struck with this, when the great men of 
our land — high officials, renowned orators, accom- 
plished statesmen — have been called away. The 
first communications that circulate in the public 
prints are dying words and manifestations as to 
religion, and whatever incidents in the whole past 
career can have any bearing on the religious char- 
acter ; and either the due eulogy upon a Christian 
life and spirit, or the honest, though feeble attempt 
to piece out a rainbow over the death-flood from 
shreds and patches of half - luminous mist, pre- 
cedes all discussion of public merits and services. 
I have often been most painfully impressed by this 
tendency in private circles, where the departed 
had manifested no special regard for religion, but 
friends have tortured into grounds of hope the 
utterances of weariness of life drawn out by pain, 
or momentary exclamations, or isolated virtuous 
acts, or passive admissions of the truth, in fine, 
everything that did not bear on its face an abso- 
lutely irreligious import. But when one who has 
indeed lived as a Christian passes away, what com- 
fort can equal that which flows from the assurance 
that our friend has found in death the very gate of 
heaven ? How lovingly do we dwell on the early 
consecration to the Saviour, the marks of his 



322 KING'S CHAPEL SEBMONS. 

lineage and kindred, the expressions of faith un- 
feigned and hope anchored within the veil, the 
traits of Christian fidelity that made the life lumi- 
nous, the path which we can now see reaching on 
from the death-hour and through the death-shadow 
to the assembly of the redeemed and the presence 
of the glorified Redeemer ! We then feel and own 
that religion is indeed the one thing needful for the 
mortal who is to put on immortality, — that there 
is nothing in life so precious as that which fits one 
to die in peace and hope, — that all things are to 
be accounted as worthless in comparison with that 
in the aim and spirit through which one wins 
Christ, and is found in him. There is thus im- 
pressed upon us a profounder sense than comes" to 
us through any other agency, of the infinite im- 
portance of personal piety, — of a soul at peace 
with God, and sustained by an immortal hope. 

Has this lesson been sent home to any of our 
hearts by God's death-angel ? Has there gone up, 
in our grief, fervent gratitude that our friend was 
one whom the Lord loved, and for whom death was 
but translation beyond the power of death ? Oh, 
let it be our life-lesson, our directory for all time 
to come, our preparation for our own last hour 
and closing scene. Over our lifeless forms there 
will be like solemn thought and anxious inquiry. 
What our surviving friends will most yearn to 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 



323 



know will be whether we fall asleep in Jesus. Shall 
we die, and leave no sign ? Oh, let it be our life- 
aim and life-work so to order our conversation here 
that there shall be only trust and hope for us when 
we die, and that what is felt for us shall be only 
the counterpart of the fullness of joy into which we 
awake from the death-slumber. 

Again, our friends who have gone before us to 
heaven speak to us of the reality of heaven. We 
may believe the promises of God, but never with so 
realizing a faith as when those who have been un- 
speakably dear to us have gone from us to inherit 
the promises. If there were a shade of skepticism 
before, it now passes away ; for we feel assured 
that so much excellence and loveliness cannot have 
died, — that one so admirably fitted for life cannot 
have been stricken from the ranks of the living, — 
that so true and pure and high an education of the 
spirit cannot have been matured and perfected for 
the earth - clods to cover, — that such powers of 
usefulness cannot have been developed, except for 
a larger, loftier sphere, — that a stewardship of 
earthly trusts so faithfully discharged cannot but 
have been merged in a stewardship of wider scope 
and for nobler uses. We always think of .such a 
friend as in heaven ; and one such argument can 
withstand the assault of every doubt and of every 
form of sophistry. I well knew a very old man, of 



324 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

marked acumen and ability, who, from early fana- 
ticism, passed, through a long ordeal of skepticism, 
to a more rational faith in his declining years, but 
who, when he had lost his hold on almost every- 
thing else that was sacred, still held unchanged 
the belief in immortality, sustained by the grave 
and memory of his devout parents, and was wont 
through life to repeat and apply to himself the 
line of Cowper, 

" The son of parents passed into the skies." 

Nor is this all. Not only the belief, but the im- 
agination is quickened through the ministry of 
death. Heaven seems nearer to us, and assumes 
more life-like forms to our thought, when it is the 
home of those who have here been the life and joy 
of our household circles. It is no longer the far- 
away, dimly conceived possibility that it may have 
been when our affections had little or no special 
property there ; but the veil is at times with- 
drawn and never wholly replaced ; luminous forms, 
in the likeness of those no longer with us in the 
body, pass in clear vision before us, and wonted 
voices cry, " Come up hither." Our affections will 
not part with their treasure, but mount where the 
beloved have passed in, follow where they have 
gone before, and, in vivid hope, take possession 
where they had marked the way. 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 



325 



There is, also, a surviving influence of the pure 
and true, the devout and faithful, which remains 
with us when they go from us, and which time 
often only confirms and deepens. At first, the 
feeling is that they have wholly passed away, — 
that the voice which has been so blessedly efficient 
to counsel, comfort, and gladden, is forever silent, 
— that for the presence withdrawn there is only 
utter and cheerless desolation. But, as we return 
to the ordinary routine of life, we find that the 
spirit of the departed is at our side. The accus- 
tomed voice pulses upon the inward ear. What 
the friend separated from us would have said, his 
well-known tone and style of sentiment, opinion 
and principle, his earnest preference in this direc- 
tion, his strong disesteem in that, — all come viv- 
idly to our thought, and are, if possible, a more 
sacred law to us, because impressed by the solemn 
sanction of death and memory. An even, uniform, 
thoroughly disciplined character thus makes itself 
felt years and years after the seal of death has been 
stamped upon it, and an unseen guidance, restraint, 
support, help, and comfort, thus often complete and 
crown the earthly work of those who seem to have 
been taken before their time, and to have left a 
large part of their work undone. 

With these thoughts I cannot help connecting 
that of a still more intimate conversance between 



326 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



the dead and the living. Heaven may be a place, 
for aught we know to the contrary ; but it is still 
more a state, and one of its prime elements must 
needs be an enlarged power of perception, cogni- 
zance, and activity. It must be heaven wherever 
the pure and happy spirit dwells, or moves, or stays. 
And must not the deathless love of those who go 
from us to the Lord keep them virtually with us, 
cognizant of what concerns our true well-being, 
watchful of our path, our trials and temptations, 
our success and progress? Were this wanting, 
would not heaven be less than heaven ? Can hea- 
ven have a greater joy than this, when surviving 
kindred remain in sympathy with the departed, and 
those on either side of the death-river move on with 
even step, on the same path, toward the same goal, 
— those on earth assured of the fellowship of their 
friends who have passed on ; those in heaven blend- 
ing their prayer and praise with the uttered and 
the voiceless worship of those who have not yet put 
off the earthly tabernacle ? 

We know not how far God's spiritual admin- 
istration may be, like his outward Providence, 
through agents or mediators. But if there be 
guardian and ministrant angels, hosts of God that 
encamp around us, messengers from him to the 
souls of men, who are so likely to stand in that 
office to us as those who, while they lived on earth, 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 



327 



were as angels of God to us, — whose ministries 
for us were those of heavenly purity, faithfulness, 
and love ? Thus may they, being dead, speak to 
us in breathings of peace, and strength, and joy, 
— in influences that energize and guide, comfort 
and gladden, — in messages from the Father to the 
souls which he has bound with them in a union too 
sacred to be suspended even by death. 

Among the dead, who by their faith and piety 
still and ever speak, I know that your thoughts, as 
well as my own, have rested on one whom you have 
seldom, and I, till now, never missed from his ac- 
customed seat in this sanctuary ; in whose life we 
have seen the beauty of holiness, and whose exam- 
ple of Christian excellence death will, I trust, em- 
balm in enduring life-likeness in the memory of all 
of us who revered and loved him. Though the 
eulogy of private merit is seldom becoming in the 
pulpit, I know you would be unwilling that he 
should pass from you without special commemora- 
tion. Attached to this church through an honored 
ancestry, who, for several successive generations, 
were worshipers and office-bearers here, — separa- 
ted from your communion only during a few years 
of early manhood passed in a distant city, — bear- 
ing an important part in the several revisions of 
your liturgy, — loving your discipline and order of 
divine service as preeminently true to the teachings 



328 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS, 



and spirit of our common Christian faith, — the 
cherished friend of all your pastors since your sep- 
aration from the English Church, — he can have 
left none more intimately conversant, or more 
closely identified with your history. 

I cannot speak at length of his pure taste, his 
generous culture, his high literary attainments, his 
skill and success as an author. These won for him 
distinguished praise and honor ; and what he ac- * 
complished so admirably in his leisure hours might 
well awaken the regret that his ambition was not 
equal to his ability, or that scholarly pursuits had 
not been his business instead of his recreation. 

But, in this sacred presence, I would rather re- 
mind you of those things in which we have seen 
in him the spirit of his Divine Master, — of his 
tender conscientiousness, his serenity and sweetness 
of temper, his heart-coined courtesy of mien and 
manner, his reverent love of God's Word and ordi- 
nances, his diffusive benevolence, manifested not 
only in gifts more than proportioned to his ability, 
but in look, and word, and deed, in protracted and 
self-denying endeavor, in every form and way in 
which he could make those around him happier 
and better. Faults he may have had ; but who can 
name them ? Have we known one who seemed 
more entirely blameless? — one of whom, as we 
look back on his finished course, we can say with a 



VOICES OF THE DEAD. 



329 



richer fullness of meaning, " Mark the perfect man, 
and behold the upright " ? 

Ever on the watch for, or, I would rather say, 
by the instinct of his religious consciousness ever 
spontaneously aware of, the opportunities for kind- 
ness, he made his daily intercourse a ministry of 
Christian love. His careful and considerate offices 
of friendship, in timely counsel and genial sympa- 
thy, have been unspeakably precious, not only to 
those who could proffer the title of kinship or es- 
tablished intimacy, but to very many whose need 
was their only claim. There are those who owe all 
their success in life to his early encouragement, his 
advice and instruction at forming or critical periods 
of their career, his helping hand over steep and 
rough passages of their way. In his modesty, he 
loved to feel himself a debtor to his friends, that 
he might seem to be discharging, while conferring 
an obligation. So entirely had thought for the 
happiness of others become the pervading habit of 
his life, that on his death-bed one of his last inqui- 
ries was, who among his friends would be most 
gratified by the gift of some beautiful spring- 
flowers gathered by loving hands to be laid upon 
his pillow. 

We cannot but recognize in him a rare combina- 
tion of the amenities and graces which constitute 
that very highest style of man, the Christian gen- 
tleman. I use the word gentleman, because to my 



330 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

mind it bears even a sacred significance, and I 
would that it were employed to designate only that 
politeness — at once lofty and lowly, self-respecting 
and deferential, heart-felt and heart-meant, shap- 
ing look, word, tone, and manner from the inspira- 
tion of an all-embracing charity — which is derived 
from communion with him in whom gentleness in 
all human relations was the type and token of the 
incarnate Divinity. This Christian gentleness, this 
urbanity betokening a denizenship of the heavenly 
city, so characterized our friend, that one could 
hardly look upon his clear brow and transparent, 
benignant countenance, still less enter into even 
transient conversation with him, and not take 
knowledge of him that he had been with Jesus. 

While we mourn his departure in the midst of 
his usefulness, we yet cannot but be thankful that 
he was called hence while his removal could be so 
sadly felt by so many hearts, — ■ before the light of 
life had begun to grow dim, or its power to become 
enfeebled. We would not, God willing, that to a 
volume of life so fairly written, and rounded to so 
beautiful a close, there should have been a melan- 
choly appendix of decline and infirmity. Above 
all, we are thanl^ul in the assurance that for one 
who so made it " Christ to live," it must have been 
64 gain to die." Brethren, let us be " followers of 
them who through faith and patience inherit the 
promises." 



SERMON XXVIII. 



HENRY WILDER FOOTE. 

PREACHED ON WHITSUNDAY, JUNE 9, 1889, IN COMMEMORA- 
TION OF REV. HENRY WILDER FOOTE. — [REPRINTED. ] 

"These are they which follow the Lamh whithersoever he 
goeth." — Rev. xiv. 4. 

So wrote the seer in his vision of heaven ; and 
is there not in these words the genuine life-record 
of the dear pastor and friend who has gone from 
us ? Seldom has one passed away for whom the 
death-change meant so little. A rich heritage of 
parental and ancestral piety he made his own by 
his early self-consecration ; and as a close, loyal, 
loving follower of Christ, he lived on earth and 
lives on in heaven. His was a character that could 
have been formed in no other school than that of 
Christ, — rich, not only in the robust and hardy 
virtues belonging to him who appears in prophetic 
metaphor as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, but 
equally in the gentler graces, the finer lines and 
more delicate tints, the meekness, sweetness, loveli- 
ness, endeared to us in the image of the Lamb of 
God. I have known him and loved him from his 



332 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



infancy ; aud, as we had lived in dear friendship 
and unbroken intimacy for many years, it was my 
hope that in God's good time he would perform for 
me those last offices of piety which it was my sad 
privilege to perform for him. 

While his and my friend, his coeval and school- 
mate, 1 will give you precious reminiscences of all 
that they had in common and of that heart-union 
too close for death to part, I want to speak to you 
especially of his work as a minister. In the pulpit 
he was preeminently a Christian minister, regard- 
ing himself as standing in his Lord's place, deliver- 
ing his message, dispensing the treasures of his 
gospel, and with the supreme endeavor to be a 
faithful steward of the divine mysteries committed 
to his charge. He sought not popularity ; he ca- 
tered not for applause ; he cared not to attract the 
public eye or ear. But he watched for souls, — 
for the avenues of access to heart and conscience, 
for the spiritual wants and needs of those to whom 
he ministered. He sjDoke the truth in love. Yet 
he used great plainness of speech. His rebukes 
and warnings were direct and unsparing, and they 
were aimed, not, as is the habit of the time-serving 
pulpit, at the sins of other communities and classes 
of people, but at precisely the temptations, defects, 
faults, delinquencies, to which his own hearers were 
1 Rev. George L. Chaney. 



HENRY WILDER FOOTE. 



333 



specially liable ; and such words of his always went 
to the heart, because they came from the heart and 
bore the impress at once of loving earnestness and 
of sacred obligation. His sermons had su]3erior 
artistical and literary merit. They were carefully 
planned, thoughtfully elaborated, gracefully writ- 
ten, and never without the manifest purpose of 
teaching, convincing, persuading, comforting, or 
edifying his hearers ; and, while their average 
standard was high, I have often listened to sermons 
of his which I wanted all the world to hear. I 
have in distinct remembrance a series of sermons 
on the Lord's Prayer, so redolent of devout thought 
and feeling, so full of ethical wisdom, so clear in 
the presentation of eternal truths in their relations 
to our own time and condition, that, if published, 
they would have won a cherished and permanent 
place in our best religious literature. He showed 
a rare felicity in his sermons on special occasions, 
whether in commemoration of the dead or at epochs 
of peculiar historical interest. His sketches of 
character and his tributes to those of precious 
memory who have gone from us can never be for- 
gotten, nor can we fail to recognize with gratitude 
his chief part in the bi-centennial celebration of 
this church, with the discourses that preceded the 
memorial day. 

His loyal service to this church as its historiogra- 



334 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



pher will be thankfully owned when we all shall 
have passed away, and I cannot but believe that 
the benefits derived from his pastorate will be still 
more enduring. I speak not now of what he has 
done for individual souls, which has a diffusive 
power God only knows how wide, and lasts on 
through eternity. But I refer to what he has 
effected for the permanent prosperity of the church 
as a religious organization, with its own peculiar 
place, mission, and methods. His settlement oc- 
curred when the westward trend of the Protestant 
population was occasioning important, perilous, and 
in some instances disastrous changes in most of the 
older churches in the city. Dead conservatism in 
your minister would have stranded this church in 
respectable and stately, but inevitable decay ; while 
the rash enterprise of headstrong progress might 
have saved the name of the church, by forsaking its 
venerable site, abjuring its hallowed associations, 
and despoiling the beauty of holiness which still 
marks, and, I trust, always will mark, its Sunday 
worship and its solemn feasts. For you the only 
wise conservatism was progressive ; the only safe 
progress was conservative. This blending of the 
two elements so often ruinously disjoined was, I 
will not say your minister's policy (for policy, 
though in itself a good word, is commonly used to 
denote what he was incapable of), but it was in ac- 



HENRY WILDER FOOTS. 835 



cordance with his character, his principles, his rev- 
erence for all that is truly venerable, his earnest, 
unresting, yearning philanthropy. The growing 
adaptation to the needs and demands of the times 
has been gradual, stepwise, but with each step so 
carefully measured in advance that there has been 
no retrograde movement. He felt that, whatever 
might be fitting in a new congregation, wonted and 
inherited rights of possession, occupancy, and con- 
trol should not be rudely disturbed, yet at the same 
time that a church has for its only legitimate charter 
the gospel of propagandism, " Freely ye have re- 
ceived ; freely give." His aim, and a successful 
aim, has been to make your organization, with no 
essential change of form, a centre and source of 
widely extended Christian endeavor and influence. 
The hospitality of the church to strangers has be- 
come generally known, and is made largely avail- 
ing at all seasons, and especially in the summer ; 
and it was Mr. Foote's desire, in which I know 
that he was cordially seconded by some of you with 
whom he took counsel, to keep the church open 
through the summer for the benefit of those tran- 
siently in the city, and especially of the great and 
increasing number of those who cannot obtain reg- 
ular sittings at such churches as they would prefer 
to attend. In the same spirit, the church has been 
fitted for evening use, opened for mid-week worship, 



336 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



and made the meeting-place for various associa- 
tions of charity, social reform, and beneficent effort. 

The courses of Sunday afternoon sermons which 
our pastor has arranged from year to year, while 
they have been of eminent usefulness to large con- 
gregations, have been a means of strength to the 
church, keeping it in the broader fellowship of the 
saints, in sympathy with the best minds and hearts 
in various communions, 1 — affording a living illus- 
tration of the virtual unity of Christian faith under 
differing names, and an efficient protest against 
f that narrow, mean sectarian separatism which it is 

hard to tolerate anywhere, but which is nowhere so 
pitiful and despicable as under the name and pro- 
fession of liberality. 

In the broad field of the world's charities, you 
have had in every direction your minister's leader- 
ship, constant sympathy, and active furtherance. 
It has been his earnest endeavor to enlist you all 
in actual Christian work, not by mere contributions 
in money, but by your giving yourselves, always 
more precious and availing than anything else that 
you can bestow, and immeasurably enhancing the 
value of whatever you may give beside. Much of 
this work has been done in ways on which there is 

1 Mr. Foote's own words were : " I have tried to make King's 
Chapel stand in its place in the kingdom of Christ, and in fellow- 
ship with all Christians." 



HENRY WILDER FOOTE. 337 

no trumpet-sounding, — service which has its only 
record in grateful hearts on earth and in the book 
of life in heaven, — labor for the sick poor, for the 
neglected boys on the street, for heathendom at the 
North End, for homes that are unhomelike, for 
children orphaned by the worse than death of their 
parents. No cause of human welfare ever failed 
of your minister's advocacy, and his action in such 
behalf was not the mere yielding to benevolent im- 
pulse, but a service with mind no less than with 
heart, with a judgment hardly ever at fault, and 
with a perseverance that never lost sight of a wor- 
thy end till it was attained. 

In these matters, in his whole professional life, 
in the various complications that occur even in the 
most peaceful and happy ministry, we who have 
known him well have witnessed equal discretion 
and firmness. Because he never uttered an ungen- 
tle word, he may have seemed pliant and easy to 
be persuaded, and so he was as regarded things in 
which only his own comfort, ease, or pleasure was 
involved ; but when there was a question of right, 
or of expediency on the verge of right, or when the 
interests of others were concerned, it was impos- 
sible to move him from a judgment deliberately 
formed. When he had weighed the matter in hand 
with conscientious care, his yes, once said, meant 
yes, and his no meant no. 



338 KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 

This, however, is but one aspect of the singleness 
of aim which gave tone to his whole character and 
conduct. He looked at no side-issues. He enjoyed 
the approval, the love, the warm devotedness which 
he could not but win ; yet these never entered into 
the motive power which actuated him. A con- 
science that should be the voice of God that jus- 
tifieth would have sufficed for him, had all the 
world been against him, and did suffice for him 
in the trials, misappreciations, and disappointments, 
which, as every minister knows, are the common 
lot of the profession, even where it seems, as with 
him, crowned with the most abundant success and 
honor. 

I need not say what he has been as a pastor. 
There cannot be a home in his flock where he has 
not been unspeakably dear, and especially where 
there has been suffering or affliction, his tender 
sympathy is associated in the most loving memory 
with the comfort from God and Christ that he has 
carried to the stricken heart. 

Nor are the least of his ministries those that have 
come to us since we have ceased to hear his voice. 
The entireness of his resignation, his sweet serenity, 
the triumph of an undoubting faith and an un- 
clouded hope, have set their seal upon the gospel 
that he preached, and demonstrated it to be the 
power of God unto salvation. 



HENRY WILDER FOOTE. 339 

His ministry has been much broader than in his 
modesty he can ever have imagined. A light so 
pure, so brilliant, could not but shine as a beacon 
fire far and wide. I knew that it was so ; yet, 
since he went from us, the testimonies to that effect 
have been multiplied beyond my thought. The 
effluence of his saintly spirit was felt wherever he 
was known. Persons whose connection with him 
was transient and seemed very slight speak of the 
good that he has done them. A former minister 
of a (so-called) orthodox church in Salem, who did 
not know him then, told me a day or two ago of 
young people in his church who used to ascribe the 
best that was in them to their acquaintance with 
Henry Foote. Like testimony comes to me from 
various quarters where I least expected it. Love 
for him and grief for his loss have leveled secta- 
rian fences. Ministers and Christians of every 
name claim a property in him as of their own spir- 
itual kindred. Prayers were offered for him dur- 
ing his illness in churches where his voice was 
never heard ; and for months I have hardly met a 
brother minister of any form or creed who has not 
paused to make anxious inquiry for him while he 
remained here, and to express love and sorrow 
since his departure. 

Oh, could only such lives, such characters, be 
multiplied, though Christians may still not all think 



340 



KING'S CHAPEL SERMONS. 



alike, there would be in the hearts of the faithful 
but one fold, as there is but one Shepherd, — nay, 
but one fold on earth and in heaven ; for 

" One family we dwell in Him, 
One church above, beneath." 

If our sad task were to be performed, what more 
fitting time for it than Whitsunday, the birthday 
of the Christian Church, the beginning of that line 
of holy men ordained by the Spirit of God to evan- 
gelize the world ? Of this sacred lineage, through 
the might of that same Spirit our dear friend has 
wrought righteousness, obtained promises, overcome 
the fear and the power of death, and entered into 
the rest that remaineth for the people of God. 
May that Spirit breathe its own peace in the home 
made desolate, in the many hearts deeply smitten 
by God's afflictive providence, in the church be- 
reaved of its shepherd ; and, while the faithful fail 
and the godly cease from among us, may it keep 
still unbroken the succession of those who, in the 
kindred and love of Christ, shall do his work and 
fulfill his joy ! 



130060 of ISeitgion; 



A Descriptive List of Books of Re- 
ligion, taken from the Publications 
of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & 
Company, Boston and New York. 



Rev. Myron Adams. 

The Continuous Creation. An Application 
of the Evolutionary Philosophy to the Christian Re- 
ligion. Crown 8vo, $1.50. 

This is one of the most successful attempts yet made to inter- 
pret the theory of evolution in harmony with Evangelical Chris- 
tianity, — or perhaps it were better to say that the author finds 
Christianity a culminating feature of the divine order of Evolu- 
tion ; and the arguments and illustrations by which he supports 
his view commend his work to all thoughtful readers. 

Professor A. V. G. Allen. 

The Continuity of Christian Thought. A 
Study of Modern Theology in the Light of its His- 
tory. Sixth Edition. i2mo, gilt top, $2.00. 

We should be at a loss to find elsewhere a statement at once so 
clear and profound of the great movement of thought in the tri- 
umphant Catholic Church. Professor Allen has that rarest of 
gifts, the power to write on theological subjects with the calm 
temper and the fair judgment of a true historian. — Christian 
Register (Boston). 

A work from the verv depths of Christian thought. ... A sin- 
gularly noble book. — Christian Union (New York). 

A fresh and striking survey of the whole course of Christian 
speculation. — British Quarterly Review. 

American Book of Church Services, 

With Selections for Responsive Reading, and 
full Orders of Service for the Celebration of Matri- 



2 * 315oofe£ of Heitgton 



mony, and for Funerals and other Occasional Minis- 
trations ; also, an ample list of Selections of Sacred 
Music, with References for the guidance of Pastors 
and Choristers. Arranged by the Rev. Edward Hun- 
gerford. i6mo, $1.25, net. 

Pastors who are planning, in behalf of their churches, the use 
of something in the line of a richer and more devotional service, 
will be greatly aided by its suggestions. . . . We think it will be 
agreed that these selections, under whatever heading, have been 
made wisely, and in respect to substance, variety, spirit, adapta- 
tion to their specific aims, and practical utility, are eminently de- 
serving of commendation. — The Congregationalist (Boston). 

The Christian Union of New York commends it in other re- 
spects and adds : " We have not seen its equal as a guide to those 
in charge of the musical service in selecting fitting words and mu- 
sic for sacred song." 

American Religious Leaders. 

A Series of Biographies of Men who have 
exerted great influence on the Religious Thought and 
Life of America. Each volume, i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

This series is designed to serve the same purpose with regard 
to the religious history of America which the series of American 
Statesmen serves with regard to its political history. It includes 
biographies of eminent men who represent the theology and meth- 
ods of the various religious denominations of America; yet the 
object of the series does not contemplate emphasizing personal 
character and history except as these are related to the develop- 
ment of religious thought or the quickening of religious life. It 
is hoped that the sei-ies, when completed, will not only depict in a 
clear and memorable way several great figures in American relig- 
ious history, but will indicate in some adequate degree the leading 
characteristics of that history, the progress and process of religious 
philosophy in America, the various types of theology which have 
shaped or been shaped by the various churches, and the relation 
of these to the life and thought of the nation. 

Jonathan Edwards. By Professor A. V. G. 
Allen, author of "The Continuity of Christian 
Thought." 

Professor Allen's " Jonathan Edwards " takes rank with the 
ablest books of its class ; we do not recall any that is more stimu- 
lating and fascinating. . . . Never before has his majestic person- 
ality been more vividly depicted, or his career and influence _ so 
broadly and firmly outlined. ... It is a matter for congratulation 
that Edwards's latest biographer is endowed for the task, lacking 



Books of i&ritgtott 



5 



neither in spiritual sympathy nor philosophical grasp. — The An- 
dover Review (Boston). 

As a biography this monograph has rare merit. —Boston Watch- 
man. 

A book of extraordinary interest. — The Advance (Chicago). 

Wilbur Fisk. By Professor George Prentice, 
of Wesleyan University. 

In the religious history of America there is no more striking 
example of pure and whole-souled devotion to the cause of the 
Christian Church than that of Wilbur Fisk ; and in this volume 
he receives full justice at the hands of a warm and sympathetic 
admirer. The author recounts the interesting story of the great 
preacher's spiritual struggles and ministerial labors in a way that 
holds the attention of the reader and wins his admiration and re- 
spect. — The Book-Buyer (New York). 

From every standpoint Professor Prentice's work v^ll be found 
both valuable and interesting. — Portland Press. 

William Augustus Muhlenberg. By Rev. 
William Wilberforce Newton, author of "Summer 
Sermons," etc. 

It is not too often that the reader chances upon a biography at 
once so sympathetic, discriminative, and intelligent. ... As a 
study of a great religious leader it must take a high rank both for 
its excellence of style and the constructive skill which has seized 
upon the controlling impulses of the life described and presented 
them with admirable clearness, and has discarded irrelevant and 
comparatively unimportant details. . . . What manner of man 
Muhlenberg was this volume shows most perfectly, and among 
works of this general character we could name but few that seem 
to us worthy to be classed in the same rank (as studies of character, 
not formal religious biographies) with this upon the man who has 
been called "the St. John of the American church." — Boston Ad- 
vertiser. 

The book is well written, attractive, and instructive, and worthy 
of its distinguished subject. — The American (Philadelphia). 

In Preparation : 

Charles Hodge. By President Francis L. 
Patton, of Princeton. 

Francis Wayland. By Professor J. O. Mur- 
ray, of Princeton. 

Archbishop John Hughes. By John G. Shea, 
LL. D., author of " The Catholic Authors of Amer- 
ica," etc., etc. 



4 



Books of Heligton 



Theodore Parker. By John Fiske, author of 

" The Idea of God," etc. 

Charles G. Finney. By Professor G. Fred- 
erick Wright. 

Other volumes to be amiounced hereafter. 

The Andover Review. 

A Religious and Theological Review, under 
the editorial control of Egbert C. Smyth, William J. 
Tucker, J. W. Churchill, George Harris, Edward Y. 
Hincks, Professors in Andover Theological Seminary, 
Andover, Mass., and with the cooperation and active 
support of their colleagues in the Faculty. Published 
monthly, forming two volumes a year, beginning with 
January and July. Single numbers, 35 cents; yearly 
subscription, $4.00. To Home and Foreign Mission- 
aries, $3.00. 

Vols. 1-4 (each volume covering a period of six 
months; 1884-85). 8vo, cloth, per vol. $2.50, net. 

Vols. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 (Jan. 1886-June, 1889), 
8vo, cloth, per vol. $3.00, net. 

No religious monthly periodical that comes to us is quite so 
interesting from a popular point of view. — New York Times. 

In every number we find something to be especially preserved. 
— The Churchman (New York). 

The most valuable theological magazine published on this con- 
tinent. — The Week (Toronto). 

Andover Review Appendix. 

Critical Appendix to The Andover Review, 
Vol. III. Notes on Scrivener's "Plain Introduction 
to the Criticism of the New Testament." Third 
Edition. By the late Professor Ezra Abbot, Profes- 
sors J. R. Harris and B. B. Warfleld, and Dr. C. R. 
Gregory. 8vo, paper, 50 cents, net. 

Andover Review, Editors of. 

Progressive Orthodoxy. A Contribution to 



X3oofc£ of l£eit§tcn 



5 



the Christian Interpretation of Christian Doctrines. 
i6mo, $1.00. 

It is an intelligent and earnest effort towards the disentangle- 
ment of some Scriptural and theological errors from some of the 
great doctrines of Christianity. We have often referred to these 
essays with approval and thankfulness as they have appeared in 
the pages of the excellent Review which reflects so much credit 
upon Andover scholarship and courage. — The Christian World 
(London). 

E. Edwards Beardsley. 

The History of the Episcopal Church in Con- 
necticut. New Edition, with Illustrations. 2 vols. 
8vo, $6.00, 7iet. 

Creditable not only to his diligence and carefulness in collect- 
ing, and his skill in arranging and combining the materials of the 
story, but also to his candor and Christian catholicity of spirit. — 
Leonard Bacon, D. D. 

The Bhagavad Gita; 

Or, The Lord's Lay. With Commentary and 
Notes, as well as References to the Christian Scrip- 
tures. Translated from the Sanscrit by Mohini M. 
Chatterji. 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 

The Same. Translated, with Introduction 
and Notes, by John Davies. In the Philosophical 
Library. 8vo, gilt top, $3.50. 

The Bible. 

The Riverside Parallel Bible. Containing 
the Old and New Testaments, both the Authorized 
Version and the Revised Version, in parallel columns. 
Carefully printed from bourgeois type, two sizes larger 
than that used in the English Parallel Bible. With 
References, Prefaces, Lists of Revisers, Readings 
preferred by the American Revisers, etc. Quarto, 
1742 pages, $5.00; Persian, S10.00 ; full morocco, 
$15.00. 

The Holy Bible. With Explanatory Notes, 
Practical Observations, and copious Marginal Refer- 



6 



315ook£ of iftdtgton 



ences. Edited by Rev. Thomas Scott. 6 vols, royal 

8vo, sheep, $i 5.00. 

The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour 
Jesus Christ. With engravings on wood from designs 
of Fra Angelico, Pietro Perugino, Francesco Francia, 
Lorenzo di Credi, Fra Bartolommeo, Titian, Raphael, 
Gaudenzio Ferrari, Daniel di Volterra, and others. 
Royal quarto, full gilt, $10.00; morocco, special, 
$20.00; levant, $25.00. 

This elegant and sumptuous edition of the New Testament is 
embellished on every page with ornamental borders and vignettes, 
exquisitely drawn and engraved, some of them being copied from 
valuable illuminated manuscripts in the British Museum, and the 
full-page illustrations are copies of the works of the world-famous 
masters named above. 

John Bunyan. 

The Pilgrim's Progress. The Holy War. 
Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners. 
Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Rev. John 
Brown, Minister of the Church at Bunyan Meeting, 
Bedford. 3 vols, each, $1.50. 

Mr. Brown, having written the fullest and best Life of Bunyan, 
is peculiarly qualified to edit Bunyan's most important works. 
The Guardian, of London, remarks : " The three volumes taken 
together supply what, till Dr. Brown came to the rescue, was 
greatly wanted, a handsome and scholarly edition of the three 
works which have made the tinker of Elstow an English classic, 
and to many of his countrymen an almost inspired teacher." 

The Pilgrim's Progress. Including Archdea- 
con Allen's Life of Bunyan and Macaulay's Essay on 
Bunyan, a list of Bunyan's Writings, Portrait, 8 col- 
ored Plates, and 62 Illustrations. 8vo, full gilt, $2.50. 
An unusually desirable edition of this religious classic. 

Rev. James S. Bush., 

The Evidence of Faith. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 
$2.00. 

A welcome addition to the literature of a new theological epoch. 
. . . These sermons have a richness and strength of expression 



Boohs of JfaUgion 



7 



that grows upon one as he becomes familiar with their statements. 
. . . They are remarkable for the power of suggestive reasoning: 
they express the sincerity of a Christian thinker and teacher; they 
can be read again and again, and have the rare quality that be- 
longs to Cardinal Newman's discourses, the quality of suggesting 
more than the words express. The reader can go through the 
volume in an hour, but the second reading will prove the sermons 
to be still more helpful, and when the book has been read a third 
time, and the lines thought over, it will not yet have yielded up 
its full meaning. . . . They contain the best statement of untram- 
meled spiritual thought that has recently found its way into print. 

— Boston Advertiser. 

Phoebe Cary. 

Poems of Faith, Hope, and Love. With Por- 
trait. i2mo, $1.50; morocco, $5.00. 

They are poems indeed ; simple, unpretending, and natural, but 
instinct with true poetic feeling, and smoothly gliding in rhythmic 
verse. — The New Englander (New Haven). 

Professor F. J. Child (editor). 

Poems of Religious Sorrow, Comfort, Coun- 
sel, and Aspiration. New Edition. i6mo, $1.25. 

Professor Child has brought together in the above-named book 
an unusually varied and excellent collection of poems relating to 
trial and bereavement, and inspired by religious trust and consola- 
tion. 

James Freeman Clarke, D. D s 

Ten Great Religions. Part I. An Essay in 
Comparative Theology. With an Index. Twenty- 
sixth Edition. Crown 8vo, $2.00 ; half calf, $3.25. 

Contents: Ethnic and Catholic Religions ; Confucius and the 
Chinese ; Brahmanism ; Buddhism, or the Protestantism of the 
East ; Zoroaster and the Zend Avesta ; The Gods of Egypt ; The 
Gods of Greece; The Religion of Rome; The Teutonic and 
Scandinavian Religion ; The Jewish Religion ; Mohammed and 
Islam ; The Ten Religions and Christianity. 

Dr. Clarke has here given us an outline of the history of each 
of the religions that have exerted the most influence in space and 
time. ... A book of consummate merit and surpassing interest. 

— Christian Register (Boston). 

He treats the ten condemned faiths in a spirit of the fullest rev- 
erence, anxious to bring to light whatever of good is contained in 
them, — The Nation (New York). 



c 



)i5oofe£ of Keltgton 



Nothing has come to our knowledge which furnishes evidence 
of such voluminous reading, such thorough study and research, 
and such masterly grasp of the real elements of these religions as 
does the volume before us. James Freeman Clarke has accom- 
plished a work here of solid worth. — Missionary Review (Prince- 
ton). 

Ten Great Religions. Part II. Comparison 
of all Religions. Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo, $2.00 ; 
half calf, $3.25. 

Contents : Introduction — Description and Classification ; 
Special Types — Variations ; Origin and Development of all Re- 
ligions ; The Idea of God in all Religions — Animism, Polytheism, 
Pantheism ; Idea of God in all Religions, — Ditheism, Tritheism, 
and Monotheism ; The Soul and its Transmigrations, in all Reli- 
gions ; The Origin of the World, in all Religions ; Evolution, 
Emanation and Creation ; Prayer and Worship in all Religions ; 
Inspiration and Art in all Religions ; Ethics in all Religions ; 
Idea of a Future State in all Religions ; The Future Religion of 
Mankind. 

The last few years have done much to throw light upon the re- 
ligions of the world, and especially those of the East. Of these 
researches the author has availed himself, and he has given the 
world a book unique in design and execution ; in its attempt to 
trace the doctrines we have named through all religions the work 
has no predecessor. — The Churchman (New York). 

Common-Sense in Religion. Eleventh Edi- 
tion. i2mo, $2.00. 

Contents: Common -Sense and Mystery; Common- Sense 
View of Human Nature; On the Doctrine Concerning God ; The 
Bible and Inspiration ; The True Meaning of Evangelical Chris- 
tianity ; The Truth about Sin ; Common-Sense and Scripture 
Views of Heaven and Hell ; Satan, according to Common-Sense 
and the Bible ; Concerning the Future Life ; The Nature of Our 
Condition Hereafter; Common-Sense View of the Christian 
Church ; Five Kinds of Piety ; Jesus a Mediator ; The Expecta- 
tions and Disappointments of Jesus ; Common-Sense View of 
Salvation by Faith ; On not being Afraid ; Hope ; The Patience 
of Hope : Love ; The Brotherhood of Men. 

Dr. Clarke has much to say which commends itself to our judg- 
ment and our feelings. There is a certain vigor in his thought, 
and an absolute clearness in his style, together with an evident 
and rugged honesty and strength of conviction underlying all, 
which make him an impressive teacher, even when we cannot 
bring ourselves to accept his instructions. — The Congregational- 
ist (Boston). 



HBoofeB of Hdtgton 



9 



Events and Epochs in Religious History. 
With 20 Portraits, Plans, and Views. i2mo, $2.00. 

Contents : The Catacombs ; Buddhist Monks ; Christian 
Monks ; Augustine, Anselm, Bernard ; Jeanne d'Arc ; Savonarola, 
Luther, Loyola ; The Mystics ; German Pietists ; Fenelon, Swe- 
denborg, Emerson ; George Fox ; Huguenots, Waldenses, Albi- 
genses ; John Wesley ; Moravians and Methodists. 

It contains an historical account of some of the most striking 
phases of religious life and character, chiefly, but not exclusively, 
Christian, together with extended critical studies of the great lead- 
ers in the religious movements of which the author treats. . . . 
He has gathered a great amount of interesting material from the 
various sources of history and of biography, and has presented 
them in a striking light, making an eminently readable and in- 
structive book. — New York Observer. 

The Ideas of the Apostle Paul. Translated 
into their Modern Equivalents. i2mo, $1.50. 

A thoughtful study of the life, character, opinions, and influence 
of the Apostle Paul. So many theological doctrines are based 
upon Paul's Epistles, or buttressed by them, that a careful exam- 
ination of them by so competent and candid a scholar as Dr. 
Clarke is peculiarly welcome. 

A work on this subject from this source does not need my com- 
mendation. But I permit myself the pleasure of expressing the 
satisfaction I have derived from its catholicity of sentiment and 
its deep spirituality. — Professor C. H. Toy, of Harvard Divin- 
ity School. 

E very-Day Religion. i2mo, £1.50. 

Twenty-nine essays discussing, with the simplicity, wisdom, 
and practical good sense characteristic of Dr. Clarke, the religion 
of daily life in the family, the neighborhood, in business, in society, 
in politics. It is a thoroughly wise and helpful book. 

They are full of thoughts that are as pertinent in the parlor as 
in the pew, and which speak as fittingly in the market-place as at 
the altar ; and this is accomplished, not by bringing the sanctuary 
down to the level of the world, but by bringing the world up to 
the level of the sanctuary. If the thoughts are for every day as 
well as for Sunday, it is because the preacher would have all days 
alike made holy. " How to make the most of life : ' is the subject of 
the first discourse, and the keynote of all. — New York Tribune. 

Self-Culture. Physical, Intellectual, Moral, 
and Spiritual. i2mo. $1.50; half calf, $3.00. 

Twenty-two lectures, discussing with admirable breadth and 
insight, the methods of educating the powers of observation, re- 



10 



Books of Heiigton 



flection, imagination, conscience, affection, reverence, temper ; edu- 
cation by books, amusements, and love of beauty, and seeking for 
truth. 

" Self-Culture " is written from the standpoint of universal ideas 
and the broadest truth. It bears the impress of ripe scholarship, 
and yet is so simple in style and clear in statement that no atten- 
tive reader can fail to comprehend the meaning or learn the lesson 
intended. Its philosophy of life is sound and its spirit such as all 
men approve. The work will be found in the best sense a useful 
handbook for parents, teachers, and the thousands of young per- 
sons for whom it was prepared. And, in speaking thus, we could 
hardly give stronger utterance to our admiration of the author's 
practical wisdom, deftness, and force of diction, and remarkably 
clear and intelligible apprehension of the problems considered. 
The volume will prove a godsend to multitudes to whom it will 
open a hitherto unknown path to education and true culture. — 
Boston Transcript. 

Memorial and Biographical Sketches. In- 
cluding Governor Andrew, Charles Sumner, Dr. Gian- 
ni ng, Theodore Parker, Dr. Howe, Dr. Gannett, Dr. 
Susan Dimock, and others, izrao, $2.00. 

The nineteen essays, articles, sermons, and addresses which 
make up this volume are marked by the sterling qualities, the 
common-sense, manliness, earnestness, and tenderness which have 
given Dr. Clarke his enviable reputation in his native city and 
State. — The Nation (New York). 

Mrs. C. E. Clement-Waters. 

Christian Symbols and Stories of the Saints, 
as Illustrated in Art. Edited by Katherine E. Con- 
way. With many full-page Illustrations. 8vo, $2.50; 
half calf, $5.00. New Edition, without Illustrations. 
Crown 8vo, $1.50. 

Benjamin B. Comegys (compiler). 

Thirteen Weeks of Prayers for the Family. 
With Prayers for Special Occasions. 121110, flexible 
roan, $1.25. 

Mr. Comegys has compiled, from various sources, short, ear- 
nest, and comprehensive prayers for use in families. He has ar- 
ranged them for morning and evening devotion for thirteen weeks, 
and has added special prayers for occasions and anniversaries. 
The quiet, sincere tone of the book, and its purity of diction, will 
commend it generally. 



315coks of Heltgion 



1 1 



Joseph Cook. 

Boston Monday Lectures. With Preludes on 
Current Events. Each volume, i2mo, $1.50. 



For searching philosophical analysis, for keen and merciless 
logic, for dogmatic assertion of eternal truth in the august name 
of science such as thrills the soul to its foundations, for widely 
diversified and most apt illustrations drawn from a wide field 
of reading and observation, for true poetic feeling, for a pathos 
without any mixture of sentimentality, for candor, for moral ele- 
vation, and for noble loyalty to those great Christian verities 
which the author affirms and vindicates, these wonderful lectures 
stand forth alone amidst the contemporary literature of the class 
to which they belong. — London Quarterly Review. 

We follow no man blindly, but we must confess that these Bos- 
ton Lectures strike us as being the finest presentation of great 
fundamental truths which we have seen for the last thirty years 
by any lecturer occupying the so-called scientific position. The 
grasp on facts is strong, the method of reasoning is clear, as it 
rises from simple inductions to the more profound, and the illus- 
tration and analogies employed are chosen with rarest skill. — 
Christian Intelligencer (New York). 

Mr. Cook lightens and thunders, throwing a vivid light on a 
topic by an expression or comparison, or striking a presumptuous 
error as by a bolt from heaven. He is not afraid to discuss the 
most abstract scientific or philosophic themes before a popular 
audience ; he arrests his hearers first by his earnestness, then by 
the clearness of his exposition, and fixes the whole in the mind by 
the earnestness of his moral purpose. — President James Mc- 
Cosh, of Princeton. 



Current Religious Perils. With Preludes and 
other Addresses on Leading Reforms. Vol. 1 1 of 
Boston Monday Lectures, including a Symposium by 
eminent Clergymen, Original Hymns, etc 8vo, $2.00. 

William Cowper. 

Poetical Works. Riverside Edition. With 
Memoir, by Rev. John Newton. 2 vols, crown 8vo, 
gilt top, $3.00 ; half calf, $6.00. 



Biology. 

Transcendentalism. 
Orthodoxy. 
Conscience. 
Heredity. 



Socialism. 
Occident. 
Orient. 



Marriage. 
Labor. 



12 



U5cofcs of MeUgtcn 



The Great Debate. 

A Verbatim Report of 'the Discussion at the 
Meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions, held at Des Moines, Iowa, Thurs- 
day, October 7, 1886. 8vo, paper covers, 25 cents. 

This book contains a fuller and more sharply defined statement 
than can be found elsewhere of the doctrinal differences, notably 
concerning future probation, which have agitated the constituency 
of the American Board for a few years past. 

Thomas De Quincey. 

Essays on Christianity, Paganism, and Super- 
stition. 121110, $1.50. 

Contents : On Christianity as an Organ of Political Move- 
ment ; The Essenes ; Secret Societies; Judas Iscariot ; The True 
Relation of the Bible to merely Human Science ; ( n the sup- 
posed Scriptural Expression for Eternity ; On Hume's Argument 
against Miracles : Protestantism : Secession from the Church of 
Scotland; The Pagan Oracles; Modern Superstition; Sortilege 
on behalf of the Glasgow Athenaeum. 

Professor J. L. Diman. 

The Theistic Argument as Affected by Re- 
cent Theories. Edited by Professor George P. Fisher. 
Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 

The author has succeeded in making it clear that recent science 
impels us to a point where the necessity of admitting the exist- 
ence of God is irresistible ; that its most elevated conceptions and 
widest generalizations render it necessary to accept the presence 
and constant efficient energy of God as realities ; and that the 
modes of operation which science discloses are in harmony with 
the fundamental principles and postulates of Christianity. — Brit- 
ish Quarterly Review. 

A defense of theistic doctrine that will seem most admirable 
and most consolatory to its adherents, and most embarrassing to 
some of its enemies. He has conducted the whole discussion 
with rare ability, and has furnished sound reasoning at every suc- 
cessive step. — New York Times. 

Orations and Essays, with Selected Parish 
Sermons. With a Memorial Address by Professor 
J. O. Murray. A Memorial Volume. With Portrait. 
8vo, gilt top, $2.50. 



IBoofts of Keltgion 



13 



Contents : A Commemorative Discourse, by the Rev. James 
O. Murray, D. D. ; Literary and Historical Addresses; The 
Alienation of the Educated Classes from Politics; The Method 
of Academic Culture ; Address at the Unveiling of the Monu- 
ment to Roger Williams ; The Settlement of Mount Hope; Sir 
Henry Vane; Religion in America; University Corporations; 
Sermons : The Son of Man ; Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the 
Life ; Christ, the Bread of Life ; Christ in the Power of his Res- 
urrection; The Holy Spirit, the Guide to Truth; The Baptism of 
the Holy Ghost ; The Kingdom of Heaven and the Kingdom of 
Nature. 

I think it is not the partiality of personal friendship which leads 
me to regard these productions of Professor Diman as not sur- 
passed by any other writings of the same class in our literature. — 
Professor George P. Fisher. 

How Dr. Diman excelled is shown by every address and essay 
and sermon in the volume. The rich, fine culture of the man ap- 
pears in everything he did. — The Christian at Work (New 
York). 

The rich contents of this volume assure his place among our 
noblest teachers and scholars. — Christian Register (Boston). 

Joseph Edkins, D. D. 

Chinese Buddhism. 8vo, gilt top, $4.50. 

A work fit to serve the double purpose of a history of Buddhism 
and a critical examination of its effects upon the intellect and life 
of China. It is a work of great interest and of permanent value. 
— New York Evening Post. 

Hugh Davey Evans, LL. D. 

A Treatise on the Christian Doctrine of Mar- 
riage. i2mo, $1.50. 

The sound morality and sensible expositions of the work are 
such as cannot be unacceptable to any one who is willing to ac- 
cept the Scriptures as a Divine rule of life and conduct. — Detroit 
Free Press. 

Ludwig Feuerbach. 

The Essence of Christianity. Translated 
from the Second German Edition by Marian Evans 
(George Eliot). 8vo, gilt top, $3.00. 

I confess that to Feuerbach I owe a debt of inestimable grati- 
tude. Feeling about in uncertainty for the ground, and finding 
everywhere shifting sands, Feuerbach cast a sudden blaze into the 



I 4 



Books of Hriigton 



darkness, and disclosed to me the way. — S. Baring-Gould, in 
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief. 

It is the work of a close, analytical thinker, and a bold, vigor- 
ous, and brilliant writer. — Free Religious Index (Boston). 

John Fiske. 

The Destiny of Man, viewed in the Light of 
his Origin. Fourteenth Edition. i6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

None are leading us more surely or rapidly to the full truth 
than men like the author of this little book, who reverently study 
the works of God for the lessons which he would teach his chil- 
dren. — Christian Union (New York). 

It is a remarkable contribution to the literature of religious 
thought. — Philadelphia Press. 

The Idea of God, as affected by Modern 
Knowledge. Eighth Thousand. i'6mo, gilt top, Si.oo. 

A remarkable little book into which Mr. Fiske has compressed 
the results of much study and of long and accurate thought. . . . 
This exposition of his views is lucid, logical, and deeply interest- 
ing. It is one more effort to reconcile science and religion, and 
coming from the pen of a disciple of Darwin and Spencer, must 
carry great weight. — Boston Trajiscript. 

The Unseen World, and other Essays. i2mo, 

$2.00. 

Contents: The Unseen World; The To-morrow of Death; 
The Jesus of History : The Christ of Dogma ; A Word about 
Miracles ; Draper on Science and Religion ; Xathan the Wise ; 
Historical Difficulties; The Famine of 1770 in Bengal; Spain 
and the Netherlands ; Longfellow's Dante ; Paine's St. Peter ; A 
Philosophy of Art; Athenian and American Life. 

The vigor, the earnestness, the honesty, and the freedom from 
cant and subtlety in his writing are exceedingly refreshing. He 
is a scholar, a critic, and a thinker of the first order. — Christian 
Register (Boston). 

William H. Furness, D. D. 

Verses, Translations, and Hymns. i6mo, 
vellum covers, Si. 25. 

The writer who has given us so many of the best original hymns 
now in use in our churches was well fitted to deal with the prob- 
lem of reproducing in English verse the gems of German Song. 
And he has done it in a masterly manner. — Rev. Dr. F. H. 
Hedge. 



liBoofts of Meltgton 



>5 



The Story of the Resurrection told Once 
More. With Remarks upon the Character of Jesus 
and the Historical Claims of the Four Gospels, and a 
Word upon Prayer. A New Edition, with additions. 
i6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

Contents : The Story of the Resurrection ; The Decline of 
Faith; The Effect of a Mistaken Theology; 'I he Mythical The- 
ory ; The Origin of the Gospels ; Familiarity with the Bible ; The 
Great Loss ; Jesus from a Legendary Point of View ; The Gos- 
pels ; how to be approached ; The Gospels read between the 
Lines ; God and Immortality ; Conclusion ; A Word upon Prayer. 

This list of subjects treated by Dr. Furness will give an idea of 
the scope and aim of the book. It does not indicate the marvel- 
ously candid, truth-loving, spiritual character of the whole, which 
gives a peculiar and lofty charm to this book as to all that Dr. 
Furness has written. 

Rev. Washington Gladden. 

The Lord's Prayer. i6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

Often as we offer this prayer, and much as we have studied 
over it to give proper expositions of it from the pulpit and in the 
catechism, we shall henceforth pray it more intelligently than we 
ever have before ; nay, we have learned, we think, to pray better 
in all our supplications, and to comprehend more in them than has 
been our wont. — Lzitheran Quarterly (Gettysburg). 

Applied Christianity. Moral Aspects of So- 
cial Questions. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

Contents : Christianity and Wealth ; Is Labor a Commodity ? 
The Strength and Weakness of Socialism ; Is it Peace or War? 
The Wage-Workers and the Churches ; The Three Dangers ; 
Christianity and Social Science ; Christianity and Popular Amuse- 
ments ; Christianity and Popular Education. 

It shows a clear apprehension of the tendencies of the times, a 
thorough appreciation of the dissatisfactions and dangers existing 
in the industrial and social world, a mastery of the theories and 
doctrines of socialists, political economists, and sociologists, a ten- 
der sympathy with all forms of human suffering, and a profound 
realization of the genius and office of Christianity. — The Church- 
man (New York). 

George S. Gray. 

Eight Studies of the Lord's Day. 121x10, gilt 
top, $1.50. 

Contents : The Phenomena of the Day ; The Origination of 



1 6 



H5oofe£ of Heltgtou 



the Lord's Day ; The Week ; The Primeval Sacred Day ; The 
Mosaic Sabbath ; The Sabbatic System of Israel ; The Permanent 
and the Transient in the Sabbatic System; The Fourth Com- 
mandment. 

The strongest, most original, most thorough, and most thought- 
ful treatise of its kind on the Sabbath that we have had the good 
fortune to read. . . . The Lord's Day is magnified and made hon- 
orable. The impression produced is profound and enduring. — 
Christian Intelligencer (New York). 

George Zabriskie Gray. 

The Crusade of the Children in the XHIth 
Century. With Illustration and Appendix. i2mo, 
$1.50. 

The pathetic historical episode of the crusade of more than one 
hundred thousand children to the Holy Land to rescue the Holy 
Places from the followers of Mahomet forms the si bject of this 
book. It is of interest as a matter of history, but still more so for 
the touching story of the misplaced but fervent zeal of these little 
pilgrims. 

Rev. William Elliot Griffis, D. D. 

The Lily among Thorns. A Study of the 
Biblical Drama entitled The Song of Songs. i6mo, 
$1.25 ; in white cloth, gilt top, $1.50. 

Contents : Part I. History and Criticism : Theory and In- 
terpretation ; Life and Times of King Solomon; Historic Char- 
acters in the Poem ; Poetic Background of the Canticle ; Dramatic 
Structure of the Song of Songs ; History of the Book Itself. 
Part II. The Text in the Revised Version. Part III. Studies 
and Comments. 

To our thinking this interpretation, effectually justified by Dr. 
GrifhVs commentary, recovers to our Bible a book which was, 
in the old form and in the old interpretation, substantially taken 
out of the Bible altogether. We heartily welcome his volume 
as a real and valuable addition to Biblical literature. — Christian 
Union (New York). 

The treatment is, in matter and manner, worthy of the theme 
as here interpreted. Every page is deeply interesting. Eloquence 
and instructiveness are combined in a wonderful way. — Boston 
Advertiser. 

There can be no question but that Dr. Griffis has made a really 
valuable addition to the literature of this much disputed book. — 
National Baptist (Philadelphia). 



}15oo&0 of MeUgion 



17 



Rev. Frank W. Gunsaulus. 

The Transfiguration of Christ. i6mo, gilt 
top, $1.25. 

The time and place of the august event, the portraiture of the 
Transfigured Christ, the appearance of Moses and Elias, the 
Transfiguration, and the Resurrection are all treated in separate 
lectures in a fresh and engaging manner. — The Christian at 
Work (New York). 

The subject is one of deep spiritual significance, and is treated 
with much devoutness and earnestness. — The Christian World 
(London). 

Henry A. Harper. 

The Bible and Modern Discoveries. With 
Map and Illustrations. 8vo, $4.50. 

In the Introduction Mr. Walter Besant says : " In this new 
work the author has attempted a thing hitherto untried. He has 
taken the sacred history as related in the Bible step by step, and 
has retold it with explanations and illustrations drawn from mod- 
ern research and personal observation." The book includes in 
popular form the most significant results of the researches made 
under the Palestine Exploration Fund. 

Mr. Harper has produced a Bible story for adults, who want to 
have their Old Testament history, particularly, supplemented and 
enriched by the reliable results of geographical and archaeological 
researches. — The Interior (Chicago). 

George Herbert and Henry Vaughan. 

Riverside Edition. Poetical Works of Her- 
bert. With Memoir, Portrait, and Notes by Rev. 
Robert Aris Willmott. Also, the Sacred Poems, and 
Private Ejaculations of Henry Vaughan, with Memoir, 
by Rev. F. Lyte. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50; half 
calf, $3.00. 

Rev. Samuel E. Herrick, D. D. 

Some Heretics of Yesterday. Crown 8vo, 
$1.50. 

Contents : Tauler and the Mystics, Wiclif, Hus, Savonarola, 
Latimer, Cranmer, Melanchthon, Knox, Calvin, Coligny, William 
Brewster, Wesley. 

Admirable sketches of these great lights of the Church and the 



i8 



HBoofes of Heltgton 



world. . . . Dr. Herrick is a master of English undefiled, and 
writes with great vigor of thought and force and beauty of style. 
— The Observer (New York). 

An excellent addition to the Sunday library of the household, 
and is equally to be recommended, for the older readers, for the 
Sunday-school library. — Christian Union (New York). 

Thomas Hughes. 

The Manliness of Christ. i6mo, gilt top, 

$1.00; paper, 25 cents. 

It is an attempt to remove the feeling that Christianity means 
unmanliness. . . . None of the virtues that make up an ideal man- 
liness — courage, truthfulness, independence, chivalrous defense 
of the weak and wronged — were absent from Christ's character ; 
on the contrary, all of them were most conspicuously present. . . . 
We commend the book heartily to young men ; they will find it 
stimulating and bracing reading. — Examiner and Chronicle (New 
York). 

Edward Hungerford. 

See American Book of Church Services. 

Hymns of the Ages. 

First, Second, and Third Series. Each in 
one volume, illustrated with steel vignettes. i2mo, 
$1.50 each. 

In these volumes we find fit expression given to many great 
thoughts, gentle moods, deep desires, and soaring faiths, in many 
a hymn truly precious in the agreement of form with inspiration. 
They date all the way from the sixth century to to-day. — Chris- 

tian Examiner (Boston). 

Hymns of the Faith. 

With Psalms. For the Use of Congregations. 
Edited by George Harris, D. D., and William J. 
Tucker, D. D., Professors in Andover Theological 
Seminary, and Mr. Edward K. Glezen, of Providence, 
Rhode Island. Crown 8vo, cloth, $1.50, net; leather, 
$1.75, net; Persian levant, full gilt, $5.00, net. 

For richness, fitness, and variety in that department, the collec- 
tion is preeminent. . . . We doubt if there be any that in this re- 
spect approaches it in freshness and fullness of adaptation to the 
needs of our Christian congregations. — The Congregationalist 
(Boston). 



115oofe£ of itehgtou 



19 



Rev. Abraham W. Jackson. 

The Immanent God, and Other Sermons. 
i6mo, $1.00. 

Contents : The Immanent God ; The Unsearchable God ; 
The Manifest God ; Law, Providence, and Prayer ; Satan, or the 
Genius of Trial ; Self-Abnegation ; The Way where the Light 
Dwelleth ; The Heart's Plea for Immortality accepted. 

Within the compass of 150 pages we have here eight discourses 
upon matters pertaining to the great themes of God, Law, Trial, 
Self-Abnegation, The Way where Light Dwelleth, and the Heart's 
Plea for Immortality accepted, which offer a fresh illustration that 
the greatness and worth of a book may be independent of its size. 
— The Churchman (New York). 

Henry James. 

The Secret of Swedenborg. Being an Eluci- 
dation of his Doctrine of the Divine Natural Human- 
ity. 8vo, $2.50. 

We admire the metaphysical acuteness, the logical power, and 
the singular literary force of the book, which is also remarkable as 
carrying into theological writing something besides the hard words 
of secular dispute, and as presenting to the world the great ques- 
tions of theology in something beside a Sabbath-day dress. — At- 
lantic Monthly. 

Society the Redeemed Form of Man, and the 
Earnest of God's Omnipotence in Human Nature. 
Affirmed in Letters to a Friend. 8vo, $2.00. 

A discussion of God, Man, Nature, and the leading facts and 
principles of society and religion. It is vigorous, trenchant, and 
compels thought. 

Literary Remains. Edited, with an Introduc- 
tion, by William James. With Steel Portrait. i2mo, 
$2.00. 

Professor William James, in an interesting introduction, de- 
scribes his father's range and habit of thought. Then follow " Im- 
mortal Life," an autobiographic sketch ; fifteen chapters under the 
general head of " Spiritual Creation ; " " Some Personal Recollec- 
tions of Carlyle ; " and a bibliography of Mr. James's writings. 

Anna Jameson. 

Legends of the Madonna, as represented in* 
the Fine Arts. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 



20 



iDoofes of ffiriigton 



Legends of the Monastic Orders, as repre- 
sented in the Fine Arts. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

Sacred and Legendary Art. In two volumes, 
the first containing Legends of the Angels and Arch- 
angels, the Evangelists, the Apostles, the Doctors of 
the Church, and St. Mary Magdalene ; the second, 
Legends of the Patron Saints, the Martyrs, the Early 
Bishops, the Hermits, and the Warrior Saints of Chris- 
tendom, — as represented in the Fine Arts. 2 vols. 
i6mo, gilt top, $2.50. 

Helen Kendrick Johnson. 

Tears for the Little Ones. Square i2mo, full 
gilt, $1.50. 

Samuel Johnson. 

Oriental Religions, and their Relation to 
Universal Religion. 

India. 8vo, 802 pages, $5.00. 

Samuel Johnson's remarkable work is . . . the result of twenty- 
years' study and reflection by one of the soundest scholars and 
most acute thinkers of New England, and must be treated with all 
respect, whether we consider its thoroughness, its logical reason- 
ing, or the conclusion ... at which it arrives. — Springfield Re- 
publican. 

A book of which every American scholar has reason to be proud. 
— T. W. Higginson. 

China. 8vo, 1000 pages, $5.00. 

Altogether the work of Mr. Johnson is an extraordinary rich 
mine of reliable and far-reaching information on all literary sub- 
jects connected with China. . . . He decidedly impresses us as an 
authority on Chinese subjects. — E. J. Eitel, Ph. D., Editor of 
The China Review (Hong Kong). 

To students of the philosophy of mind and of the principles of 
human growth in civilization it is indispensable. — New York 
Evening Post. 

Persia. With an Introduction by the Rev. 
O. B. Frothingham. 8vo, 827 pages, $5.00. 

The literature, already large, of comparative religion, has, in- 
deed, no parallel yet to this monument of broad scholarship and 



11500kg of Keitgton 



2] 



ardent faith. ... A task " so nobly realized as this," with such 
fine ardor, such religious insight, such powerful grasp of wide 
generalization, is rarely seen ; it is an honor to the cause alike of 
letters and of religion. This last volume is at least the equal of 
its predecessors in breadth of view and eloquence of statement. — 
Literary World (Boston). 

Lectures, Essays, and Sermons. With a Por- 
trait, and Memoir by Rev. Samuel Longfellow. Crown 
8vo, gilt top, $1.75. 

Contents : Memoir ; Florence ; The Alps of the Ideal and the 
Switzerland of the Swiss ; Symbolism of the Sea ; Fulfillment of 
Functions ; Equal Opportunity for Woman ; Labor Parties and 
Labor Reform ; The Law of the Blessed Life ; Gain in Loss ; 
The Search for God ; Fate ; Living by Faith ; " The Duty of 
Delight ; " Transcendentalism ; Appendix (giving a list of Mr. 
Johnson's published writings). 

Samuel Johnson was a very noble person, one who thought all 
the time, and thought precisely, boldly, largely, with extraordinary 
breadth of view, as well as singular reach of insight ; an original 
man, absorbed in living questions, which he grappled with power- 
fully, with fine appreciation of their difficulties as well as of their 
capabilities ; a man who took truth at first-hand, yet without con- 
ceit of wisdom, or critical unfairness, or individual bias, or per- 
sonal predilection, further than his own warm faith led him in the 
direction of hope ; a man of great knowledge, yet humane, genial, 
sunny, the furthest possible from an ascetic or a misanthrope. 
Such a man ought not to be lost. That he may not be, this vol- 
ume is published. — Rev. O. B. Frothingham, in Christian 
Register. 

No descriptions of travel could be more delightful than his let- 
ters from Europe ; while those which disclose his religious feeling 
are a living voice from a soul profoundly touched by the Divine 
Spirit, especially several letters of consolation to friends in be- 
reavement, which express with singular beauty the loftiest and 
most helpful comforts. — H. W. Foote, in Salem Gazette. 

Thomas k Kempis. 

Of the Imitation of Christ. With decorative 
head and tail pieces, initial letters, etc. i6mo, $1.50; 
flexible calf or morocco, $4.00. 

Pocket Edition. With the same Decorations. 
i8mo, $1.00; flexible calf, $3.00. 

Edition de Luxe. With full-page Plates, all 
the Decorations of the above editions, red ruling, etc. 



22 



3i5oofe£ of Keltgton 



8vo. parchment-paper covers, $5.00; flexible morocco, 
$9.00. 

The immortal work of Thomas a Kempis, which has had, next 
to the Bible, the largest number of readers of which sacred litera- 
ture, ancient or modern, can furnish an example. In it, according 
to Dean Milman, " is gathered and concentrated all that is elevat- 
ing, passionate, profoundly pious, in all the older mystics. — De- 
troit Free Press. 

Thomas Starr King. 

Christianity and Humanity. Sermons. Ed- 
ited, with a Memoir, by Edwin P. Whipple. With 
Portrait. New Edition. i6mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

Contents : The Experimental Evidence of Christianity ; Cries 
from the Depth ; The Supremacy of Jesus ; Christian Thought of 
the Future Life ; True Spiritual Communications ; Life more 
Abundantly ; Lessons of the Drought : The Christian and the 
Heathen Dollar ; The Divine Estimate of Death ; Distribution of 
Sorrows : Deliverance from the Fear of Death ; The Two Har- 
vests ; The Organ and its Symbolism ; The Supreme Court De- 
cision and our Duties ; Living for Ideas and Principles ; The 
Heart, and the Issues of Life ; Salt that has lost its Savor, or Re- 
ligion Corrupted ; Lessons from the Sierra Nevada ; Living 
Waters from Lake Tahoe ; The Comet of July, 1S61 : Religious 
Lessons from Metallurgy ; Christian Worship. 

As expositions of the Christianity which consists in living ac- 
cording to the dictates and example of the founder of Christianity, 
some of them are of rare lucidness and force, while those which 
are upon social and political topics are models of utterances, such 
as men will not only hear, but be lastingly affected by. — Chris- 
tian Union (New York). 

We wish the words of this brave and loyal man could find a 
place in the library of every young man in the land. — Alliance 
(Chicago). 

The Koran. 

Selections from the Koran. By Edward Wil- 
liam Lane. A New Edition, revised and enlarged, 
with an Introduction by Stanley Lane Poole. 8vo, 
gilt top, $3.50. 

For Mr. Lane's introduction, Mr. Poole has substituted a sketch 
of the early Arabs, the salient points of Islam, and the history of 
the Kurdn. Mr. Poole seems to have succeeded in carrying out 
the original intention of Mr. Lane, and making a book of general 
interest. Some of the wilder passages or poems about heaven. 



115cok0 of ifoltgtcm 



2.3 



hell, and the resurrection have a striking resemblance to the most 
poetic and elevated fragments of Walt Whitman, who may have 
been a faithful reader of the Islam scriptures. The introductory 
chapter about the early Arabs is as romantic and gallant as imagi- 
nation can desire ; there is no destruction of the old poetic legends 
about that people, but confirmation of them all, to the last test of 
that magnificent hospitality which has for centuries been, in song 
and story, the crowning Arab glory. — Boston Advertiser. 

A Comprehensive Commentary on the Quran : 
Comprising Sale's Translation and Preliminary Dis- 
course, with additional Notes and Emendations. To- 
gether with a complete Index to the Text, Preliminary 
Discourse, and Notes. By the Rev. E. M. Wherry. 
Volumes I., II., and III., $4.50 each ; Vol. IV., $4.00. 

The work has grown out of the wants which the author felt 
in pursuing his own study of the Koran and his work as a mis- 
sionary among Muslims. Though primarily intended for the use 
of those engaged in missionary work among Mohammedans, it 
contains so much important matter explanatory of the Koran that 
it will be found to have great value to every one interested, as so 
many now are, in the study of comparative religion. 

Rev. Alvan Lamson, D. D. 

The Church of . the First Three Centuries ; 
or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of the Early 
Fathers, with special reference to the Doctrine of tire 
Trinity; illustrating its late origin and gradual forma- 
tion. Revised Edition, enlarged. 8vo, $2.50, net. 

Dr. Lamson was a Unitarian in opinion, but in this book he 
does not advocate his views except by showing how they are sup- 
ported by history. To quote his own words : " I have wished 
simply to make the volume a repository of facts, particularly con- 
nected with the opinions of Christians of the first three centuries, 
on the nature and rank of the Son and Spirit ; and I have spared 
no pains in the endeavor to give the exact expressions of the great 
church teachers of the period included in my survey, with copious 
and minute references." 

Lucy Larcom. 

Easter Gleams. i6mo, parchment-paper, 75 
cents. 

Miss Larcom has collected, under this title, a score or so of her 
own hymns and poems — none of them to be found in her volumes 
which are before the public, and most of them now printed for the 



2 4 



H5ooft£ of Keltgton 



first time — all of them having some bearing upon the thought of 
the Resurrection, or expressing the aspirations which grow out of, 
and cluster about, the Easter season and the faith in a living 
Christ. Her desire in preparing the little book evidently has been 
to share with others what is very dear to herself. 



Breathings of the Better Life. New Edition. 
x8mo, $1.25; half calf, $2.50. 



We unhesitatingly pronounce the volume one of the very best 
of its class. There is not an unimpressive or commonplace selec- 
tion in it. It is a stimulant to intellect and a joy to good taste. — 
Morning Star. 



Beckonings for Every Day. A Calendar of 
Thought. Arranged by Lucy Larcom. i6mo, $1.00. 



It aims to give some of the most awakening and inspiring words 
of the great and good of all ages, and contains quotations from 
Browning and Phillips Brooks, from Robertson and Channing 
and Fenelon. The writer is catholic enough to include selections 
from James Martineau and Newman, and has been especially 
happy in finding new quotations both in prose and verse for her 
little volume. — Boston Transcript. 

A book of devotional thoughts for daily use, of a much higher 
order than usual. — New York Evening Post. 



An Historical Sketch of Sacerdotal Celibacy 
in the Christian Church. Second Edition, enlarged. 

8vo, 686 pages, $4.50. 

One of the most valuable works that America has produced. 
Since the great history of Dean Milman I know no work in Eng- 
lish which has thrown more light on the moral condition of the 
Middle Ages, and none which Is more fitted to dispel the gross 
illusions concerning that period which Positive writers and writers 
of a certain ecclesiastical school have conspired to sustain. — W. 
E. H. Lecky, in " History of European Morals." 



Light on the Hidden Way. 

With an Introduction by James Freeman 
Clarke. i8mo, $1.00. 



A remarkable and vivid study of immortality. All readers in- 
terested in books like " The Little Pilgrim ; ' will find this volume 
very engaging. In his Introduction Dr. Clarke states that the 
author has had no connection with Spiritualism, and "her report, 
therefore, is an independent one. and deserves attention from 




315oofe£ of Keltgton 



25 



those engaged in investigating this occult Borderland, where 
beings of the other world are reported as coming into relations 
with the inhabitants of our own." 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. 

Seven Voices of Sympathy. Selections from 
the Writings of H. W. Longfellow by Charlotte Fiske 
Bates. i6mo, $1.25. 

Rev. Samuel Longfellow and Rev. 
Samuel Johnson. 

Hymns of the Spirit. i6mo, roan, $1.25, net. 

As a collection of devotional lyrics, this book possesses high 
merit, and has given remarkable satisfaction wherever it has been 
used. It is an enlarged and revised issue of " A Book of Hymns." 

Rev. Jacob Merrill Manning, D. D. 

Sermons. By Rev. J. M. Manning, late Pas- 
tor of the Old South Church, Boston. With Portrait. 
Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. 

Contents: Sermons: The Immortality of the Cross; Sons 
of God through Christ ; The Structure of the Epistle to the 
Romans ; The Suffering Saviour ; A Law of Progress ; The Wit- 
ness of Unbelief ; Worship as a Means of Spiritual Culture ; New- 
born Souls the Glory of the Church ; Obeying the Heavenly 
Vision; Holy Men the World's Great Hope; Conscience; The 
Beginning and End of Sin ; The Valley of Vision ; How One's 
Thinking is Himself : The Ideal Life ; Seeing the King in the 
Far-off Land ; Christian Character its own Vindication ; The 
Limits of Christian Liberty ; The Spirit of Christ ; Preachers, and 
what they should Preach ; Religious Creeds ; The Blessedness of 
Living ; Theory and Practice in Religion ; Manliness ; Turning 
Death into Life ; The Prayers of the Saints ; The Story of Naa- 
man and its Lessons ; Completed Lives ; The Privilege of Suffer- 
ing ; We all do Fade as a Leaf ; Sickness and its Lessons ; The 
Abundant Entrance ; The Victory over Death ; The Gospel of 
the Windows ; The Natural and the Spiritual Body ; Christian 
Missions and the Social Ideal. Addresses: Samuel Adams ; John 
Brown ; Eulogy upon Henry Wilson, delivered in the State House, 
Boston. 

These sermons and addresses . . . are remarkable for rich 
Christian experience, and prove him to have been a man of rare 
gifts and sweet spirit. — Christian Intelligencer (New York). 



26 



HBcofes of Heligton 



John Milton, and Andrew Marvell. 

Riverside Edition. The Poetical Works of 
Milton. With Life, by Rev. John Mitford, and Por- 
trait. Also, Poetical Works of Marvell. With Me- 
moir, by Henry Rogers, and Portrait. 2 vols., crown 
8vo, gilt top, $3.00 ; half calf, $6.00. 

Paradise Lost. Handy- Volume Edition. 241110, 
gilt top, $1.00. 

The Same. Riverside Classics, New Edition. 
With Explanatory Notes. Square i6mo, $1.00 ; half 
calf, $2.00 ; morocco, or tree calf, $3.50. 

James Montgomery. 

Poetical Works. Riverside Edition. With 
Memoir by Robert Carruthers, and Portrait. 2 vols., 
crown 8vo, gilt top, $3.00 ; half calf, $6.00. 

William Mountford. 

Euthanasy ; or, Happy Talk towards the End 
of Life. New Edition. i2mo, gilt top, $2.00. 

It is full of the sweet, restful calm of eventide, with scarcely a 
hint of the action and confusion of midday. 

The " happy talk " is between two men : one very old, and look- 
ing forward to his departure from earthly scenes ; the other, one 
whose strength has failed, and whose inward vision has been made 
clear and strong through the discipline of pain. They sit in the 
quiet of the old library, and talk of death, of all that makes death 
seem hopeful and blessed, of the wonderful immortality which 
shall be theirs. — The Liberal Christian (New York). 

Jt is the product of a mind cultivated, gentle, and reverent, ap- 
pealing to the subtle intuitions of the spirit, and aiming to per- 
suade the soul to rest in the peace of confidence in the goodness 
of God. — Boston Advertiser. 

Thomas Mozley. 

Reminiscences, chiefly of Oriel College and 
the Oxford Movement. By the Rev. T. Mozley, for- 
merly Fellow of Oriel. 2 vols., i6mo, $3.00; half calf, 
$6.00. 

Every page of these Reminiscences is delightful. The book 



HBoofcs of Kdigton 



27 



must be read by everybody who would understand the age. We 
have a sketch or a portrait of nearly everybody whose name has 
become known to us in connection with the Oxford Movement, 
with countless anecdotes, all giving life to characters that we so 
often regard almost as abstractions, or principles, or books. — 
American Literary Churchman (Baltimore). 

Many before now — Oakley, Froude, Kennard, not to mention 
Newman himself — have contributed to the story of the Tractarian 
Movement. None of these, not even the famous Apologia, will 
compare with the volumes now before us in respect to minute 
fullness, close personal observation, and characteristic touches. — ■ 
Professor Pattison, in The Academy (London). 

Eiisha Mulford. 

The Republic of God : An Institute of Theol- 
ogy. 8vo, $2.00. 

Dr. Mulford writes with a grand and convincing seriousness. 
. . . This is a unique work and devotes to the great topics of 
theology a kind of thinking of which we have had little in English 
literature and need much. — The Independent (New York). 

We do not remember that this country has lately produced a 
speculative work of more originality and force. . . . The book is a 
noble one — broad-minded, deep, breathing forth an ever-present 
consciousness of things unseen. — The Critic (New York). 

Rev. Theodore T. Munger. 

The Appeal to Life. i6mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

Contents : The Witness from Experience ; Christ's Treatment 
of Unwilling Skeptics; Truth through and by Life; Life not 
Vanity ; The Gospel of the Body : The Defeat of Life ; The Two 
Prayers of Job; Trust and Righteousness; The Twofold Force 
of Salvation ; Faith Essential Righteousness ; Evolution and the 
Faith ; Immortality and Modern Thought ; Man the Final Form 
in Creation ; Music as Revelation. 

The book is an admirable exemplification of what in the preface 
Dr. Munger calls the vital way of presenting the Gospel, — " that 
is, truth set in the light of daily life and the real processes of hu- 
man society. It is not averse to dogma ; it accepts with docility 
the revelation ; but it seeks for the vindication and illustration of 
the truth in the actual life of the world, on the ground that the 
revelation is through and in this life." 

The Freedom of Faith. With Prefatory Es- 
say on "The New Theology." i6mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

Contents :• Prefatory Essay : The New Theology ; Sermons : 
On Reception of New Truth; God our Shield; God our Reward; 



.28 



H5ocfe£ of Religion 



Love to the Christ as a Person : The Christ's Pity ; The Christ 
as a Preacher ; Land Tenure ; Moral Environment ; Immortality 
and Science ; Immortality and Nature ; Immortality as taught by 
the Christ ; The Christ's Treatment of Death ; The Resurrection 
from the Dead ; The Method of Penalty ; The Judgment ; Life a 
Gain ; Things to be Awaited. 

The sermons, as such, deserve to rank with the noblest produc- 
tions of modern times ; they have the large sympathies of Beecher, 
the exegetical tact of Robertson, the literary finish of Vaughan,, 
and the daring of Maurice. — British Quarterly Review. 

The prefatory essay certainly contains the fullest and clearest 
statement of what the " new theology " is with which we have ever 
met. . . . This volume is most fascinating. — The Congregation- 
alist (Boston). 

Lamps and Paths. New Edition, enlarged. 
i6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

Recommended for use in Sunday-school libraries by the Congre- 
gational Sunday-School and Publishing Society of Boston. 

Contents : The Desert ; Lamps and Paths ; The Story of a 
Cup of Water; The Story of the Book ; Four Jewels; The Good, 
the Better, the Best ; The Parting of the Ways ; One Voice, but 
Two Meanings; Light and Eyes; A Little Maid; Vows As- 
sumed ; Home and Character. 

Some of the best specimens of sermons to children that I have 
ever read. — Rev. Washington Gladden. 

Healthful and admirable throughout. — Examiner and Chroni- 
cle (New York). 

On the Threshold. Talks to Young People. 
i6mo, gilt top, $1.00. 

Contents : Purpose ; Friends and Companions ; Manners , 
Thrift; Self-Rehance and Courage; Health; Reading; Amuse- 
ments; Faith. 

Sympathetic, healthful, and manly. ... It is such a plea as all 
manly young men will listen to. — New York Everting Post. 

J. A. W. Neander. 

General History of the Christian Religion 
and Church. Translated from the German by Rev. 
Joseph Torrey, Professor in the University of Ver- 
mont. With an Index volume. 6 vols., 8vo, $20.00. 
The Index alone, $3.00. 

Neander's Church History is one of the most profound, care- 
fully considered, deeply philosophized, candid, truly liberal, and 



iSoofes of HcUgion 



29 



independent historical works that has been written. In all these 
respects it stands head and shoulders above almost any other 
church history in existence. — Calvin E. Stowe, D. D. 

Neander still remains beyond doubt the greatest church histo- 
rian, thus far, of the nineteenth century. — Dr. Philip Schaff, 
History of the Apostolic Church. 

The Illustrated New Testament 

See Bible. 

Timothy Otis Paine, LL. D. 

Solomon's Temple and Capitol, Ark of the 
Flood and Tabernacle ; or, the Holy Houses of the 
Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Samaritan, Septuagint, Cop- 
tic, and Itala Scriptures ; Josephus, Talmud, and Rab- 
bis. Illustrated with 42 full-page folio Plates and 120 
Cuts drawn by the Author. In four Sections, each 
$5.00. In one volume, cloth, $23.50; half morocco, 
$27.00 ; morocco, $30.00 ; 2 vols., flexible morocco, 
$32.00. {Sold only by Subscription) 

Having had the pleasure of a prolonged examination of Pro- 
fessor Paine's work on the Jewish Tabernacle and Temple, I am 
deeply impressed with the unsparing labor, broad research, excep- 
tional acuteness, and artistic skill which it evinces. ... In its 
field, if I am not mistaken, it will prove what the Germans call an 
epoch-making work. — Prof. Joseph Henry Thayer, Harvard 
University. 

It comprises a faithful analysis of all portions of the Scriptures 
that bear upon the subjects announced in the title-page. It is a 
perfect reproduction, as if from architectural plans and specifica- 
tions, of the several consecrated structures described in the Bible. 
It is entirely unique in its thoroughness and minuteness, leaving 
nothing whatever to conjecture, but founding all its details on 
the careful interpretation of specific texts. Such a work sheds in- 
valuable light on Biblical exegesis, and places us in imagination 
successively where all the great personages of the great religious 
epochs have stood. — North Ainerican Review. 

Leighton Parks. 

His Star in the East. A Study in the Early 
Aryan Religions. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

To read "His Star in the East" is to wish everybody else 
would read it. . . . Mr. Parks recognizes the high aspirations, the 



So 



315oofe£ of Hdigton 



noble thought, the exalted spiritual life in the Indian religions ; he 
recognizes in them the spirit that may lead to practical human 
brotherhood, if only they will retain their essential truth, and go 
on to acceptance of the broader truth and higher ideals of Chris- 
tianity, which answers all their yearnings, supplements all their 
defects, appreciates their love of meditation, preaches the essen- 
tial doctrine of the Hindus, that man cannot exist without God, 
and offers to them in addition the highest human manifestation of 
God, and an activity of spiritual life, a heaven of glad and con- 
scious service, the unwearied exercise of the highest faculties in- 
stead of their ideal of passivity, their Nirvana of unemotional ex- 
istence, of perfect rest. In its liberality, sympathy, and unpreju- 
diced study of the early Aryan religions, Mr. Parks's book ranks 
with " The Ten Great Religions " of the Rev. James Freeman 
Clarke. . . . The book is so deeply interesting that he who does 
not read it for himself will miss a great pleasure and much de- 
lightful satisfaction. — Worcester Spy. 

Full of noble thought and ardent religious feeling, earnest, ele- 
vated, liberal, clear in style, interesting, and impressive. — Boston 
Post. 

Blaise Pascal. 

Thoughts, Letters, and Opuscules. Trans- 
lated from the French by O. W. Wight, A. M. With 
Introductory Notices, and Notes from all the Com- 
mentators. i2mo, $2.25; half calf, $3.50. 

Provincial Letters. A New Translation, with 
Historical Introduction and Notes by Rev. Thomas 
McCrie, preceded by a Life of Pascal, a Critical Es- 
say, and Biographical Notice. Edited by O. W. 
Wight, A.M. i2mo, $2.25; half calf, $3.50. The 
set, 2 vols., half calf, $7.00. 

Pascal, by his " Provincial Letters," did more to ruin the name 
of Jesuit than all the controversies of Protestantism. — Hallam. 

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 

The Struggle for Immortality. Essays. i6mo, 
$1.25. 

Contents : What is a Fact ? Is God Good? What does Reve- 
lation Reveal ? The Struggle for Immortality ; The Christianity 
of Christ ; The Psychical Opportunity ; The Psychical Wave. 

It is impossible to do justice to the remarkable discussion which 
the author conducts in the above order, in regard to the present 
and future of the human soul. It is at once able, striking, bril- 



Books of Kriiglon 



5^ 



liant with bright thoughts, bristling with points of irony, keen in 
its analysis, and most profoundly impressive with its pathos and 
power. . . . The whole volume sparkles with the characteristic 
style and daring thoughts and thrusts of the author. — Liitheran 
Observer (Philadelphia). 

No earnest soul who has known and suffered in doubt can afford 
to miss the help, the solid founded, solemn cheer, which waits in 
these pages. — Boston Transcript, 

Songs of the Silent World, and other Poems. 
With Portrait. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

There is little that is material about Miss Phelps's verse. Most 
of it has a pure spiritual quality which places it apart from and 
above ordinary poetry. As it is written in peculiar moods, so it 
needs to be read in peculiar moods. It will strengthen religious 
faith and comfort the sorrowing. It fulfills its purpose of making 
the world beyond as real as this, and how much that is only those 
who have doubted know. We could ill afford to lose from our 
poetical literature anything that Miss Phelps has written. — Bos- 
ton Transcript. 

The Gates Ajar. i6mo, ^r.50. 

Of all the books which we ever read, calculated to shed light 
upon the utter darkness of sudden sorrow, and to bring peace to 
the bereaved and solitary, we give, in many important respects, 
the preference to " The Gates Ajar." — The Congregationalist 
(Boston). 

Beyond the Gates. i6mo, $1.25. 
The Gates Between. i6mo, $1.25. 
The above three volumes, in box, $4.00. 

The Phillips Exeter Lectures. 

Lectures delivered before the Students of 
Phillips Exeter Academy, 1885-1886. i2mo, $1.50. 

Contents: Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Exercises, by Rev. 
Edward Everett Hale, D. D. ; Habit and its Influence in the 
Training School, by James McCosh, D. D., LL. D. ; Socialism, 
bv Francis A. Walker, LL. D. ; The Spontaneous Element in 
Scholarship, by Samuel C. Bartlett, D. D., LL. D. ; The Senti- 
ment of Reverence, by Franklin Carter, Ph. D., LL. D. ; Men : 
Made, Self-made, and Unmade, by E. G. Robinson, D. D., LL. D. ; 
The Ideal Scholar, by Noah Porter, D. D., LL. D. ; Biographv. 
by Rev. Phillips Brooks, D. D. 

This volume ought to have a wide reading by all thoughtful 
persons. It is not merely a work for students in course of educa- 
tion, but discusses subjects which concern us all, and are treated 
by the master minds of to-day. ... It will help any one who reads 



32 



115oofe£ of fteltgton 



it, both intellectually and religiously, — National Baptist (Phila- 
delphia). 

Full of fresh, pungent thought and lessons of instruction. — 
Christian at Work (New York). 

Prayers of the Ages. 

Compiled by Caroline S. Whitmarsh, one of 
the editors of " Hymns of the Ages." 161110, $1.50. 

There is something suggestive and impressive in this array, to- 
gether, of petitions to heaven from the great and good of all ages, 
all climes, all creeds. Men who contended over dogma and doc- 
trine in all honesty and sincerity, we find animated by very much 
the same reverent, tender, awe-stricken, trustful, submissive, for- 
giving spirit, when bowing before the common Father. — New 
York Times. 

I have long wished for something of the kind, a broad, liberal, 
catholic presentation of what must be regarded as the flower of 
the world's piety and devotion. — John G. Whittier. 

Progressive Orthodoxy. 

See Andover Review, Editors of. 

Rev. James Reed. 

Swedenborg and the New Church. i6mo, 
gilt top, $1.25. 

While the work is definite and positive in its affirmations, it is 
written in an admirable spirit, and is quite free from every taint 
of that narrow sectarianism or supercilious dogmatism which too 
often disfigures professedly religious works, and may be cordially 
recommended to any one who desires to acquaint himself with the 
principles of Biblical interpretation and the theological views of the 
Swedenborgian or New Church. — Christian Union (New York). 

We predict for the book a useful history in the future growth of 
the New Church, and we hope that it may meet with that hearty 
recognition from all who are interested in our teachings which its 
eminent excellence should command. — New Jerusalem Messen- 
ger (Boston). 

Eduard Wilhelm Eugen Reuss. 

History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New 
Testament. Translated from the Fifth Revised and 
Enlarged German Edition, with numerous bibliograph- 
ical additions, by Rev. Edward L. Houghton. 2 vols., 
8vo, $5.00. 



DBoofcs of Meligton 



33 



An exceedingly valuable contribution to the Biblical apparatus 
of the theological student. . . . The volume is a storehouse of in- 
valuable information for the zealous student of the original Scrip- 
tures, both in its text and in its abundant bibliography. — Ziott's 
Herald (Boston). 

A correct and readable translation of one of the most important 
and valuable of the recent works on the origin, composition, and 
authorship of the New Testament writings. — Professor George 
P. Fisher, of New Haven. 

An exhaustive and valuable treatise. — The Churchman (New 
York). 

Edward Robinson, D. D. 

A Harmony of the Four Gospels in Greek. 
Newly arranged, with Explanatory Notes. Revised 
Edition. Giving the Text of Tischendorf, and Vari- 
ous Readings accepted by Tregelles, Westcott and 
Hort, and in the Revised English Version of 1881, 
With additional Notes by M. B. Riddle, D. D., Pro- 
fessor of New Testament Exegesis in Hartford Theo- 
logical School. 8vo, $2.00, net 

It would be difficult to name a standard work that is better 
worth republishing than Dr. Edward Robinson's Greek " Har- 
mony of the Gospels." It would be difficult to name a scholar 
better qualified to edit the republication than Dr. M. B. Riddle, 
of Hartford. The changes made by the editor bring the work, in 
its Greek text, its critical apparatus, and its notes, up to the line 
of the best recent scholarship ; but it still remains, in all essential 
respects, the work of Dr. Robinson. The good judgment, as well 
as the good scholarship, displayed in the work is gratifying. . . . 
Every Bible student who reads Greek needs a Greek harmony of 
the Gospels, and this particular Greek harmony ought to be in 
great demand. — Rev. Willis J. Beecher. 

The " Harmony " is now put on a basis which corresponds to 
the present condition of Biblical scholarship, and which may carry 
forward through another generation the good fruits of Dr. Robin- 
son's work. — The Independent (New York). 

A Harmony of the Four Gospels in English. 
According to the Common Version. Newly arranged, 
with Explanatory Notes. Twenty - second and Re- 
vised Edition. With Footnotes from the Revised 
Version of 1881, and Additional Notes, by Professor 
M. B. Riddle, D. D. 8vo, $1.50, net. 
Dr. Edward Robinson's Harmony of the Four Gospels has long 



34 



liSoofes of Heltgton 



been a standard work. . . . The footnotes, which constitute a 
new feature,, are selected from the Revised Version. The Appen- 
dix is that of the revised Greek Harmony. Dr. Riddle has made 
many and valuable additions. Thus tins new volume is, all in all, 
as nearly perfect as may be, and we are sure that it will be re- 
ceived with special favor by all students of the sacred Word. — 
The Evangelist (.New York). 

Biblical Researches in Palestine. With Maps, 
Plans, Notes, etc., etc. 3 vols., 8vo, $10.00; the Maps 
alone, Si. 00. 

Dean Stanley said of these volumes : " They are amongst the 
very few books of modern literature of which I can truly say that 
I have read every word. I have read them under circumstances 
which riveted my attention upon them — while riding on the back 
of a camel, while traveling on horseback through the hills of Pales- 
tine, under the shadow of my tent when I- came in weary from 
the day's journey. These were the scenes in which I first became 
acquainted with the work of Dr. Robinson. But to that work I 
have felt that I and all students of Biblical literature owe a debt 
that can never be effaced/' 

Physical Geography of the Holy Land. A 
Supplement to " Biblical Researches in Palestine." 
With Index. 8vo, $3. 50. 

The Maps of " Biblical Researches in Palestine " serve for this 
work. 

The work is quite complete in itself, though it is only the third 
part of a scheme which the author dearly cherished, and on which 
he was earnestly employed when death closed his labors. — Lon- 
don Reader. 

A capital summary of our present knowledge. — The Athenceum 
(London). 

Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Tes- 
tament : Including the Biblical Chaldee. From the 
Latin of William Gesenius, by Edward Robinson. 
Twenty-second Edition. 8vo, half russia, $6.00, net. 

This is a very beautiful and complete edition of the best He- 
brew Lexicon ever yet produced. — Loudon Clerical Journal. 

English-Hebrew Lexicon : Being a complete 
Verbal Index to Gesenius' Hebrew Lexicon as trans- 
lated by Edward Robinson. Prepared by Joseph 
Lewis Potter, A. M. 8vo, S2.00, net. 



Books Of ifoltgtOH 



35 



A Greek and English Lexicon of the New 
Testament. New Edition, revised and in great part 
rewritten. 8vo, $4.00, net. 

Prof. Josiah Royce. 

The Religious Aspect of Philosophy. i2mo, 
gilt top, $2.00. 

Contents : Introduction ; Religion as a Moral Code and as a 
Theory; Book L The Search for a Moral Ideal; The General 
Ethical Problem ; The Warfare of the Moral Ideals ; Altruism 
and Egoism in Certain Recent Discussions ; Ethical Skepticism 
and Ethical Pessimism ; The Moral Insight ; The Organization 
of Life. Book II. The Search for a Religious Truth ; The World 
of Doubt ; The World of the Postulates ; Idealism ; The Possi- 
bility of Error ; The Religious Insight ; Epilogue. 

The style is crisp, clear, and attractive ; the summaries of recent 
discussions on moral and religious questions are so interesting 
that one is apt to forget that it is a philosophical work that one is 
reading. — National Baptist (Philadelphia). 

John Campbell Shairp. 

Culture and Religion in some of their Rela- 
tions. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

Contents: The Aim of Culture — its Relation to Religion; 
The Scientific Theory of Culture ; The Literary Theory of Cul- 
ture ; Hindrances to Spiritual Growth; Religion combining Cul- 
ture with Itself ; Notes. 

As an antidote to the doubt which disturbs the minds of many 
Christian scholars, we know of nothing so wholesome and com- 
forting as this little book. The spirit of the book is one of the 
utmost reverence, yet of unflinching courage. — The Independent 
(New York). 

This little volume we commend especially to young persons for 
its scholarly tone and character, for its Christian spirit, for the 
marks of liberal and Christian culture which it bears, and for the 
weighty suggestions and counsels which it conveys. — Monthly 
Religions Magazine (Boston). 



The Nature and Form of the American Gov- 
ernment Founded in the Christian Religion. i6mo, 
75 cents. 

An able and careful discussion of a question that greatly inter- 
ests many of the best American citizens. 




36 Bocks of l&eUgion 



A. P. Sinnett. 

Esoteric Buddhism. Sixth American Edition, 
With Introduction written for it by the author. i6mo, 
$1.25. 

Contents : Esoteric Teachers ; The Constitution of Man ; 
The Planetary Chain ; The World Periods ; Devachan ; Kama 
Loca ; The Human Tide-Wave ; The Progress of Humanity ; 
Buddha ; Nirvana ; The Universe ; The Doctrine Reviewed. 

In the East the inner spiritual meaning of Buddhism has never 
been put into books, but is confined to those who have the reli- 
gious exaltation that enables them to receive it. It is this mean- 
ing which Mr. Sinnett has been the first to give to the Western 
world. Mr. Sinnett has rendered an important service to specu- 
lation as well as to religious thought. — Boston Advertiser. 

The Occult World. Third American Edition, 
with Author's Corrections and new Preface. i6mo, 
$1.25. 

Contents : Preface ; Introduction : Occultism and its Adepts ; 
The Theosophical Society : First Occult Experiences ; Teachings 
of Occult Philosophy; Later Occult Phenomena; Appendix. 

His devoted earnestness and ingenious arguments enlist and in- 
terest the reader. — Religio-Philosophical Journal (Chicago). 

It has excited the interest of many earnest thinkers. — Worces- 
ter Spy. 

William Smith. 

Dictionary of the Bible : Comprising its An- 
tiquities, Biography, Geography, and Natural History. 
American Edition. Revised and edited by Professor 
Horatio Balch Hackett, D. D., and Ezra Abbot, LL. D. 
4 vols., 8vo, 3,667 pages, with 596 Illustrations. The 
set, $20.00; sheep, $25.00; half morocco, $27.50; half 
calf, extra, $27.50; full morocco, full gilt, $40.00 ; tree 
calf, $45.00. 

There are several American Editions of Smith's Dictionary of 
the Bible, but this edition comprises not only the contents of the 
original English edition, unabridged, but very considerable and 
important additions by the editors, Professors Hackett and Abbot, 
and twenty-six other eminent American scholars. This edition 
has 500 more pages than the English, and 100 more illustrations ; 
more than a thousand errors of reference in the English edition 
are corrected : and an Index of Scripture Illustrated is added. 

Dr. Smith's Dictionary is a grand thesaurus of Biblical lore, a 



looofcs of KeUgton 



37 



complete compendium for the interpretation of the Scriptures in 
their archaeology, geography, history, and their linguistic difficul- 
ties. It is worth more on a Bible-reader's desk than fifty commen- 
taries. — Dr. Howard Crosby. 

It is a library in itself ; it is scholarly and critical enough for 
the most advanced student ; it is readable and interesting enough 
for the average mind ; its arrangement is admirable ; its tone is 
reverent, but independent ; its researches are rigid, and its deduc- 
tions careful ; and as a companion to the Bible, as a work of ref- 
erence for the study, as a book to own and to read, to place in the 
library and in the Sabbath-school, we know not its superior, and 
know of nothing to take its place. — Watchman and Reflector 
(Boston). 

This Dictionary is itself a library, and every minister should be 
the possessor of a copy of it. We believe that this American 
edition is, in every respect, the best work of the kind yet pub- 
lished. — Zioris Herald (Boston). 

The labor bestowed on the book by the American editors is 
immense and of high merit. A great many errors and omissions 
in the English edition have been set right. — Springfield Repub- 
lican. 

No similar work in our own or in any other language is for a 
moment to be compared with it. — Quarterly Review (London). 

This magnificent work has no rival in its department. — Sun- 
day School Times (Philadelphia). 

Rev. Newman Smyth, D. D. 

Social Problems. Sermons to Workingmen. 
8vo, paper covers, 20 cents. 

Contents : Claims of Labor ; Use and Abuse of Capital ; So- 
cial Helps: 

These sermons are reprinted from <; The Andover Review," in 
which they attracted marked attention. 

Rev. Robert South, D. D. 

Sermons Preached upon Several Occasions. 
With a Memoir of the Author. Edited by William G. 
T. Shedd, D. D. 5 vols., 8vo, $1 5.00. 

Of all the great preachers of the English Church, South was 
unquestionably one' of the foremost. . . . He was thoroughly hon- 
est in his convictions, deeply spiritual in his views of Christianity, 
and utterly fearless in his defense of what he believed to be true. 
— Christian Witness (Boston). 

We doubt if, in the single quality of freshness and force of ex- 
pression, of rapid and rushing life, any writer of English prose, 
from Milton to Burke, equaled South. — E. P. Whipple. 



38 Bocto of ffieUgfon 

Harriet Beecher Stowe. 

Religious Poems. Illustrated. i6mo, $1.50. 

The poems are all characterized by the genius of Mrs. Stowe, 
and, we think, will add to her already wide reputation. There is 
a dreamy, shadowy fancy about many of them that is really en- 
chanting. In all, there is a profound appreciation of the inner 
life of religion, — a wrestling for nearness to God. — American 
Christian Review. 

Jonathan Swift. 

Complete Works of Jonathan Swift, Dean of 
St. Patrick's, Dublin. With Notes and a Life of the 
Author, by Sir Walter Scott. Containing Additional 
Letters, Tracts, and Poems not hitherto published, 
and Steel Portrait. Edition de Luxe, large paper, lim- 
ited to 250 copies. 19 vols., 8vo, each $4.00, net; the 
set, $76.00. net. {Sold only in sets.) 

These volumes include Sermons on various subjects, Tracts in 
Defense of Christianity, in Support of the Church Establishment, 
and on the Sacramental Test Act, marked by the directness and 
vigor characteristic of the author. 

Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D. D. 

American Comments on European Questions, 
International and Religions. 8vo, $3.00. 

The papers in this volume relating to religious subjects are as 
follows : The Drift of Europe, Christian and Social ; Paparchy 
and Nationality ; The Intercourse of Christian with Non-Christian 
Peoples ; What is Science ? What is Religion ? Christ, the Church, 
and the Creed ; Lucretius or Paul ; Final Cause ; A Critique of 
the Failure of Paley and the Fallacy of Hume. 

Mr. .Thompson was a keen observer, a brilliant critic, a sound 
reasoner, and a broad Christian. His sympathies are always on 
the side of noble sentiments and correct thinking. His words are 
wise and sometimes even prophetic. The-thirteen essays collected 
are well worth preserving as a contribution to the advanced thought 
of the age. — Philadelphia Press. 

The range taken by these essays is wide, and as a whole they 
are worthy the earnest study of every student of the great moral 
and social questions of the day. — The Observer (New York). 



liSoofcs of KeUgion 



39 



Henry Thornton. 

Family Prayers and Prayers on the Ten Com- 
mandments, with a Commentary on the Sermon on 
the Mount, etc. Edited by the late Rt. Rev. Manton 
Eastburn, Bishop of Massachusetts. i6mo, Si. 50. 

One of the best volumes of family prayers which have been pub- 
lished. It has been long and favorably known in this country. 
Probably no published volume of family prayers has ever been the 
vehicle of so much heart -felt devotion as these. They are what 
prayers should be, — fervent, and yet perfectly simple. — Chris- 
tian Witness (Boston). 

Henry Vaughan. 

See George Herbert. 

E. D. Walker. 

Reincarnation. A Study of Forgotten Truth. 
i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

A book which will be very widely read. . . . Mr. Walker has 
massed together, as has never been so clearly done, the history of 
the rise and development of the doctrine, . . . and puts forth the 
strongest arguments on his side of the question. — Pioneer-Press 
(St. Paul). 

The tenor of high thinking throughout the book is wholesome 
and inspiring. — Brooklyn Times. 

An intensely interesting book. — The Epoch (New York). 

Rev. Julius H. Ward. 

The Church in Modern Society. i6mo, gilt 
top, $1.00. 

Contents : Permanent Institutions ; Church Development be- 
fore the Reformation : The Church in Modern Life ; The Church 
in Disintegration ; The Church in the World ; The Inclusive 
Church ; The Spiritual Method of the Church; The Church in the 
Family ; The Church among the People ; The Church in the Na- 
tion ; Constructive Unity in Religious Forces ; Unity through 
Working Agreements. 

This concise treatise, having twelve chapters of moderate length, 
tends from the beginning toward the heart of the question which is 
now vital and foremost as a question in common among thinking 
believers, — Christian Unity, — though it is not directly discussed 
till near the end of the volume. Mr. Ward is remarkable among 
our writers for the public for a keen and wide observation of the 



40 



Boofes of Hfitgtou 



currents of American thought, for quick sympathy with liberal 
and humane movements in society, religion, and politics, and for a 
literary skill acquired by constant and varied practice. — Rt. Rev. 
F. D. Huntington. 

A thoughtful study of the position the Church ought to occupy 
and the work it ought to do in society. Mr. Ward holds, with 
many earnest thinkers, that the function of the Church in spiritu- 
alizing the world and counteracting the materializing influences of 
modern life cannot be performed without a far more intimate sec- 
ular relation than at present exists. — New York Tribune. 

William F. Warren. 

Paradise Found. The Cradle of the Human 
Race at the North Pole. A Study of the Prehistoric 
World. With original Illustrations and Charts. 8vo, 
$2.00. 

We read this marvel of learning and logic with augmenting en- 
thusiasm. We do not see how any one can refute the argument. 
We earnestly urge all ministers and intelligent Sunday-school 
superintendents and teachers to procure the book. — Rev. J. H. 
Vincent, D. D., Corresponding Secretary of the Methodist Epis- 
copal Sunday-School Union. 

The hypothesis is in the highest degree probable. You have 
certainly given us what I think will be an epoch-making book. — 
Rev. James Freeman Clarke, D. D. 

John Greenleaf Whittier. 

Religious Poems. In Volume II. of Poetical 
Works. Riverside Edition. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 
$1.50. 

The Inner Life. In Volume III. of Prose 
Works. Riverside Edition. Crown 8vo, gilt top, 
$1.50. 

Text and Verse. For Every Day in the Year. 
Scripture Passages and Parallel Selections from Whit- 
tier's Writings. Arranged by Gertrude W. Cartland. 
32mo, 75 cents. 

William Burnet Wright. 

Ancient Cities, from the Dawn to the Day- 
light. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 



H5oofe0 of Heltgton 



4i 



Contents: Ur, the City of Saints; Nineveh, the City of Sol- 
diers ; Babylon, the City of Sensualists ; Memphis, the City of the 
Dead ; Alexandria, the City of Creed-Makers ; Petra, the City of 
Shams ; Damascus, the City of Substance ; Tyre, the City of Mer- 
chants ; Athens, the City of Culture ; Rome, the City of the Law- 
Givers ; Samaria, the City of Politicians ; Susa, the City of the 
Satraps ; Jerusalem, the City of the Pharisees ; New Jerusalem, the 
City of God. 

In a manner remarkably attractive, devoid of technicalities, yet 
accurate in statement, Mr. Wright tells of the ancient cities of 
Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Judea ; of the stupendous architecture 
of Nineveh, of Babylon, and of Karnak ; of the wonderful monu- 
ments of Egypt ; of the splendors of Jerusalem, and of the dread- 
ful desolation which now pervades those regions. . . . The story 
of the greatness and the fall of these cities of a long forgotten age, 
as Mr. Wright has depicted them, is wonderfully fascinating. — 
Boston Advertiser. 

The study involved has been great. Its fruits appear on every 
page. The author's style is warm, vivid, eloquent, and his large 
learning in archaeology is fused in the molten glow of his discourse. 

— The Evangelist (New York). 

The World to Come. Sermons, with a Lec- 
ture on Christmas. i6mo, gilt top, $1.25. 

Contents ; A Happy New Year ; The Model Church ; Teach 
us to Pray; The Keys of the Kingdom; Spiritual Ploughing; 
Jericho ; Gideon's Men ; Self-Pity : Saul in the Witch's Cave ; 
Samson : Self-Deception ; To Parents ; Saving Faith ; Franklin 
Snow ; What Must I do to be Saved ? What has God done to Save 
Me ? The Missionary Spirit ; Easter : Transfiguration ; Flower 
Sunday ; Decoration Day ; Harvest Sunday ; Christmas. 

There is something remarkable about these sermons. On first 
reading they seemed so simple, yet so suggestive ; read again and 
yet again, the fact that this preacher is emphatically a thinker is 
put beyond a doubt. These discourses, being full of light and love, 
are fresh, stimulating, and to a most unusual degree helpful. The 
Christmas sermon seems to contain the concentrated essence of a 
library. — Reuen Thomas, D, D. 

I hold Dr. Wright's book in very high esteem. The subjects 
are treated in a scholarly manner, and in a style which is wonder- 
fully fresh and fascinating. The book is rich in its suggestiveness 
and instruction. I have read its pages with an increasing delight, 
and gladly commend it to others. — Alexander McKenzie, 
D. D. 

No more interesting or remarkable volume has reached us of 
late than this collection of vigorous, graphic, and earnest addresses. 

— The Week (Toronto). 



42 



Books of Meltgton 



Isaac Watts. 

Horse Lyricae and Divine Songs. With a 
Memoir by Robert Southey, and a Portrait. With 
Poems of Henry Kirke White. Riverside Edition. 
Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.50 ; half calf, $3.00. 

John F. Weir. 

The Way : The Nature and Means of Revela- 
tion. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $1.75. 

A distinct and valuable contribution to theological literature. . . . 
It presents the results of an acute, devout, powerful, and scholarly 
mind, assimilating and transferring into life the choicest teachings 
of the liberal evangelical church of our time. — Boston Advertiser. 

Characterized by deeply religious feeling and much spiritual 
apprehension. — The Evangelist (New York). 

Adeline D. T. Whitney. 

Holy- Tides. Seven Songs for the Church's 
Seasons. Illuminated parchment-paper. i6mo, 75 cts. 

Mrs. Whitney in " Holy-Tides " celebrates the great seasons of 
the Church, — Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Whit- 
sunday, and Trinity. The poems are animated by a very devout 
spirit, and will surely appeal both strongly and tenderly to all who 
share Mrs. Whitney's faith and aspiration. 

John Woolman, 

Journal. Edited and with an Introduction by 
John G. Whittier, and an Appendix. i6mo, $1.50. 

A perfect gem. His is a beautiful soul. An illiterate tailor, he 
writes in a style of the most exquisite purity and grace. His moral 
qualities are transferred to his writings. His religion is love. His 
Christianity is most inviting: it is fascinating. — H. Crabb Rob- 
inson, in his Diary. 

Get the writings of John Woolman by heart. — Charles 
Lamb. 



For sale by all Booksellers. Sent, post-paid, on receipt of 
price by the Publishers^ 

Houghton, Mifflin & Company, 

4 Park Street, Boston ; 1/ East zyth Street, New York. 



4 



V 



